“Shore patrol is screaming at me on the radio, ‘Man overboard! The boat has been hit! Man overboard!’ There were 149 sailors and marines on this mike boat. It was struck by a freighter that was coming in,” longtime Clintonite and former Navy Officer Joe Cloninger remembered about that fateful Jan. 17, 1977, night in Barcelona, Spain.
A transport boat had overturned, carrying servicemen that expecte…