COVID, border duties blamed in sinking
Marine amphibious vehicle’s crew was unprepared, reports on 2020 incident say.
SAN DIEGO — A Marine Corps investigation found that COVID-19 restrictions and overstretched troop commitments — including deployments to the Mexico border — played a role in the training and maintenance lapses that led to the sinking of an Assault Amphibious Vehicle off San Diego last year, killing eight Marines and a sailor.
The investigation, which examined the formation of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, was released alongside the Navy’s own report into its role in the incident.
The Marines and sailor from Camp Pendletonbased 1st Battalion, 4th Marines — who ranged in ages from 18 to 23 — were killed when the AAV sank while ferrying them from San Clemente Island to the amphibious transport dock ship Somerset. Another Marine Corps investigation, released earlier this year, found that the poorly maintained vehicle began taking on water, broke down and that the vehicle commander waited too long to give the order to evacuate. Seven Marines on the craft survived.
The Marines on board had also not received water evacuation training, that earlier investigation found.
Under pressure from the families of those killed, the Marines launched the second investigation. Whereas the first looked at the accident itself, the second examined everything that led up to that AAV and those Marines being in the water that day. Specifically, the service investigated the formation of the 15th MEU.
Marine Expeditionary Units are mobile Marine Air Ground Task Forces that operate from Navy amphibious ships. MEUs include an infantry battalion, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, amphibious vehicles and logistics support troops. The MEU will usually operate from a Navy expeditionary strike group made up of three amphibious ships.
In the case of the 15th MEU, the platoon element consisted of the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines. Its battalion landing team — the Marines assigned to ride in the AAVs — was drawn from 1/4’s Bravo Company.
The Marines found that, upon its formation in April 2020, the 15th MEU “did not receive forces that were optimally trained and equipped,” according to the investigation.
Lt. Gen. Carl Mundy III, who headed the investigation, placed much of the responsibility for training and maintenance on the commander of the 3rd Amphibian Assault Battalion — the unit responsible for providing AAVs and their crews to the MEU.
In a conference call with reporters Monday, Marine Maj. Gen. Gregg Olson, the assistant deputy commandant of the Marines, said that maintenance time ahead of training with the MEU was cut because some Marines had participated in an exercise and had to quarantine for COVID-19 when they returned, giving them only three weeks to work on the vehicles.
Mundy points to a “tasksaturated environment” affecting I Marine Expeditionary Force. Key officers in the chain of command were deployed on a major Middle East exercise, while other Camp Pendleton Marines were tasked with extra duties domestically. Those included augmenting Customs and Border Protection at the U.S.-Mexico border, and providing a platoon to the Navy hospital ship Mercy, which was responding to the pandemic in Los Angeles.