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Home >> Marine Amphibious Unit

Marine Amphibious Unit

Ship Designation: 
NULL-NULL
Date Lost: 
Sunday, October 23, 1983
Terrorist Bombing in Beirut
At approximately 0622 on Sunday, October 23, the Battalion Landing Team headquarters building in the Marine Amphibious Unit compound at Beirut International Airport was destroyed by a terrorist bomb. The catastrophic attack took the lives of 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers and wounded more than 100 others. The bombing was carried out by one lone terrorist driving a yellow Mercedes Benz stake-bed truck that accelerated through the public parking lot south of the BLT headquarters building, where it exploded. The truck drove over the barbed and concertina wire obstacle, passed between two Marine guard posts without being engaged by fire, entered an open gate, passed around one sewer pipe barrier and between two others, flattened the Sergeant of the Guard's sandbagged booth at the building's entrance, penetrated the lobby of the building and detonated while the majority of the occupants slept. The force of the explosion [12,000 pounds] ripped the building from its foundation. The building then imploded upon itself. Almost all the occupants were crushed or trapped inside the wreckage. . .more died than on the deadliest day of fighting in Vietnam, the invasion of Iraq or the entire 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Beirut Memorial Website


Lost At Sea Log

Number of sailors in this log: 237

Namesort ascending Service Branch
LCPL Jesse Ellison USMC
HM3 William Elliot USN
MSGT Roy Edwards USMC
HN Bryan Earle USN
CPL Timothy Dunnigan USMC
SGTMAJ Frederick Douglass USMC
PVT Nathaniel Dorsey USMC
LCPL Thomas Dibenedetto USMC
PFC Michael Devlin USMC
PFC Sidney Decker USMC
MAJ Andrew Davis USMC
LCPL Russell Cyzick USMC
LCPL Kevin Custard USMC
LCPL Rick Crudale USMC
LCPL Brett Croft USMC
SGT Kevin Coulman USMC
LCPL David Cosner USMC
CPL Bert Corcoran USMC
LCPL Johnny Copeland USMC
LCPL Curtis Cooper USMC

Pages

Various, including official DOD report