Shaffer
12-08-03, 08:03 AM
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. - Thousands of Navy sailors and Marines were poised to swarm ashore in a training exercise that starts Monday along a part of the Gulf of Mexico coast, the first such joint operation at this Florida Panhandle base.
For nearly 60 years, the Navy and Marines used Vieques, a tiny island off the coast of Puerto Rico, for pre-deployment bombing and for gunnery and tactics practice. However, training stopped there after an errant bomb killed a security guard in 1999, and the forces left in May.
The Navy moved training to more than a dozen coastal bases, including Eglin.
More than 7,400 Marines and sailors will particpate in the exercise. Many will hit the shore and assemble convoys before tracking across a coastal highway, where they will disappear into the thick woods of the base.
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/7437205.htm
For nearly 60 years, the Navy and Marines used Vieques, a tiny island off the coast of Puerto Rico, for pre-deployment bombing and for gunnery and tactics practice. However, training stopped there after an errant bomb killed a security guard in 1999, and the forces left in May.
The Navy moved training to more than a dozen coastal bases, including Eglin.
More than 7,400 Marines and sailors will particpate in the exercise. Many will hit the shore and assemble convoys before tracking across a coastal highway, where they will disappear into the thick woods of the base.
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/7437205.htm