Combat· Lebanon Multinational Force (Beirut Bombing)
Beirut Barracks Bombing
On a quiet Sunday morning, a lone attacker drove a truck packed with the explosive equivalent of more than twelve thousand pounds of TNT through the perimeter and into the lobby of the building housing the Marine battalion landing team headquarters at Beirut International Airport, where it detonated and collapsed the structure in seconds. The blast killed hundreds of Americans, the overwhelming majority of them Marines, the worst single-day loss of life the Corps had suffered since the landings on Iwo Jima in 1945. The suicide bombing, carried out against a force constrained by peacekeeping rules and posted in a fixed, exposed position, shocked the nation and shattered the rationale of the Beirut mission. It precipitated an investigation into the security failures that had allowed it and hastened the decision to withdraw the Marines from Lebanon. The bombing remains one of the defining tragedies in Marine Corps history.
Record no. 657