{"id":18161,"date":"2019-10-23T19:11:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T19:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/10\/23\/1983-beirut-barracks-bombing-the-blt-building-is-gone\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T20:28:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:28:40","slug":"1983-beirut-barracks-bombing-the-blt-building-is-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2019\/10\/23\/1983-beirut-barracks-bombing-the-blt-building-is-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"1983 Beirut barracks bombing: \u2018The BLT Building is gone!\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At 6:22 on Sunday morning Oct. 23, 1983, a 19-ton yellow Mercedes stake-bed truck entered a public parking lot at the heart of Beirut International Airport. The lot was adjacent to the headquarters of the U.S. 8th Marine Regiment\u2019s 1st Battalion, where some 350 American service members lay asleep in a four-story concrete aviation administration building that had been successively occupied by various combatants in the ongoing Lebanese Civil War. Battalion Landing Team 1\/8 was the ground element of the 1,800-man 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU), which had deployed to Lebanon a year earlier as part of a multinational peacekeeping force also comprising French, Italian and British troops. Its mission was to facilitate the withdrawal of foreign fighters from Lebanon and help restore the sovereignty of its government at a time when sectarian violence had riven the Mediterranean nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The force represented a neutral and stabilizing presence, and the Lebanese people welcomed its arrival. But it soon got caught up in the burgeoning conflict, and what peacekeepers had described as a benign environment became decidedly hostile. Indeed, on April 18, 1983, a suicide bomber had detonated an explosives-laden delivery van outside the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. In subsequent weeks Druze and Shiite militias sporadically fired artillery shells, mortar rounds and rockets at the Marines on or near their Beirut airport base. Still, the airport largely remained open, and, astoundingly, U.S. commanders seemingly did little to bolster base security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an oversight that would have fatal consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marine sentries initially paid little attention to the Mercedes truck. Heavy vehicles were a common sight at the airport, and in fact the BLT was expecting one that day with a water delivery. The truck circled the parking lot, then picked up speed as it traveled parallel to a line of concertina wire protecting the south end of the Marine compound. Suddenly, the vehicle veered left, plowed through the 5-foot-high wire barrier and rumbled between two guard posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then it was obvious the driver of the truck \u2014 a bearded man with black hair \u2014 had hostile intentions, but there was no way to stop him. The Marines were operating under peacetime rules of engagement, and their weapons were not loaded. Lance Corporal Eddie DiFranco, manning the sentry post on the driver\u2019s side of the truck, soon guessed the driver\u2019s horrifying purpose. \u201cHe looked right at me\u2026smiled, that\u2019s it,\u201d DiFranco later recalled. \u201cSoon as I saw [the truck] over here, I knew what was going to happen.\u201d By the time he managed to slap a magazine into his M16 and chamber a round, the truck had roared through an open vehicle gate, rumbled past a long steel pipe barrier, threaded between two other pipes and was closing on the BLT barracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sergeant of the guard Stephen Russell was alone at his sandbag-and-plywood post at the front of the building but facing inside. Hearing a revving engine, he turned to see the Mercedes truck barreling straight toward him. He instinctively bolted through the lobby toward the building\u2019s rear entrance, repeatedly yelling, \u201cHit the deck! Hit the deck!\u201d It was futile gesture, given that nearly everyone was still asleep. As Russell dashed out the rear entrance, he looked over his shoulder and saw the truck slam through his post, smash through the entrance and come to a halt in the midst of the lobby. After an ominous pause of a second or two, the truck erupted in a massive explosion \u2014 so powerful that it lifted the building in the air, shearing off its steel-reinforced concrete support columns (each 15 feet in circumference) and collapsing the structure. Crushed to death within the resulting mountain of rubble were 241 U.S. military personnel \u2014 220 Marines, 18 Navy sailors and three Army soldiers. More than 100 others were injured. It was worst single-day death toll for the Marines since the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the sound of the blast Colonel Tim Geraghty, commander of the 24th MAU, ran outside his combat operations center. \u201c[I found] myself engulfed in a dense gray fog of ash,\u201d he recalled, \u201cwith debris still raining down.\u201d His logistics officer, Major Bob Melton, then motioned to Geraghty and gasped, \u201cMy God, the BLT building is gone!\u201d Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, assistant chaplain for the U.S. Sixth Fleet, was in a nearby building when the explosion occurred and later recounted the horrific scene: \u201cBodies and pieces of bodies were everywhere. Screams of those injured or trapped were barely audible at first, as our minds struggled to grapple with the reality before us.\u201d Sergeant Russell \u2014 who had watched the truck explode \u2014 had been blown through the air, knocked unconscious and injured but had managed to survive a gas-enhanced explosion experts later estimated had the destructive yield of 6 tons of TNT. The FBI Laboratory later described it as \u201cthe largest conventional blast\u201d yet documented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within 10 minutes of the attack and a few miles north a suicide bomber in an explosives-packed pickup truck targeted a nine-story building housing soldiers from the 3rd Company of France\u2019s 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment. Guards shot and killed the driver, stopping the truck 15 yards shy of the building, but the terrorist still managed to trigger his device. Though only half as powerful as the bomb that had leveled the Marine compound, the second blast brought down the French barracks, killing 58 paratroopers\u2014many of whom had been standing on outside balconies, trying to discern what had occurred at the U.S. base just down the coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An unknown group calling itself Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombings. Investigators later concluded that Hezbollah \u2014 the Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored proxy army \u2014 had organized the attacks, which were significant in two ways, beyond the appalling death tolls. For one, they signaled an upswing in terrorism that has grown steadily worse over the last three decades. The attacks also made it clear extremists had altered their tactics. For years Islamic militants struck out at the West mostly with kidnappings \u2014 the 1979 abduction of more than 60 U.S. Embassy personnel in Tehran being the most conspicuous example. With the Beirut bombings such terrorists had raised the stakes, exhibiting a willingness to kill themselves in attacks aimed at slaughtering as many Westerners as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colonel Geraghty, who faced criticism for inadequate security at the Marine compound, suggested later the Beirut bombings marked the true start of the global war on terror. He drew a line from Lebanon through the al-Qaida attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. \u201cWho would have thought,\u201d he said, \u201cyears later here we are [fighting] essentially the same crowd?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to an independent investigation of the Marine barracks bombing commissioned by the Department of Defense and chaired by retired Navy Admiral Robert L.J. Long, \u201cTerrorist warfare, sponsored by sovereign states or organized political entities to achieve political objectives, is a threat to the United States that is increasing at an alarming rate. The catastrophe\u2026demonstrates that the United States, and specifically the Department of Defense, is inadequately prepared to deal with this threat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t