“We saw a ship coming at us suddenly and it kept coming,” Marine Corps Corporal Herb Braxton told the Associated Press in 1977. “People started to yell, ‘Dammit, watch out,’ but the ship kept coming…The bump didn’t do much damage but the ship just kept on coming into us and that’s what turned us over.”
Braxton, of Camden, N.J., was one of 124 Sailors and Marines from the USS Guam and USS Trenton aboard a liberty boat on January 17, 1977, when it collided with a freighter in the Barcelona harbor.
Forty-nine servicemen lost their lives in the accident. Braxton was one of 75 survivors. Other shipmates in the area witnessed the tragic accident or assisted in the subsequent rescue and recovery operations.
LCM-6 Accident - Barcelona, Spain - 17 January 1977 