PDA

View Full Version : Marine dies as tank plunges into water



thedrifter
02-18-04, 07:49 PM
February 18, 2004

Marine dies as tank plunges into water

By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer


OCEANSIDE, Calif. – A Marine corporal drowned Feb. 17 when his M1A1 Abrams tank fell from a Navy landing craft and sank into a Guam, a Marine Corps spokesman said.
The accident killed Cpl. Adam S. Lipford, 22, of Madisonville, La., said Capt. Bill Pelletier, spokesman for the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The accident happened about 4:15 p.m., as the air-cushioned landing craft was transporting Lipford and the tank to the dock landing ship Germantown in Guam’s Apra Harbor, Pelletier said by telephone from the amphibious assault ship Peleliu. No other Marines were inside the tank at the time.

Divers recovered Lipford’s body about 6:10 p.m. Lipford, a tank driver with Bravo Company, 1st Tank Battalion, was pronounced dead at Naval Hospital Guam. Tankers from the battalion, based at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., were deployed with the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 13th MEU.

Marines and sailors of the MEU were in the fourth day of an end-of-deployment vehicle wash-down on a Guam beach at the time of the accident. The 13th MEU is returning home from a seven-month deployment with Expeditionary Strike Group 1 that included operations in southern Iraq, the Arabian Sea and the Horn of Africa.

A team from ESG-1 was being formed to investigate the incident, Pelletier said.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-292925-2654585.php


Sempers,

Roger
:marine:

Rest In Peace