I was alive for the LIBERTY thingy---and heard the radio reports within an hour of the event----and I also served in the US
Navy-------the Liberty incident was one of a million navy
accidents. Such accidents are very common during conflict---
and -----even during peacetime there are fatal military accidents of the very much avoidable kind. ---------where there are guns
and bombs-----there are lots of accidents. I big truck fell of the
New Jersey Turnpike yesterday-----also an avoidable accident.
all victims of accidents feel aggrieved and BLAME someone---
lots of times people are held responsible either justly or
unjustly------sometimes responsible people are not blamed
Interesting how the U.S. Naval personnel who were actually there disagree with you
http://www.usslibertyveterans.org/files/War Crimes Report.pdf
Accident?
On June 8, 1967 the USS Liberty was cruising in the Mediterranean in International waters ordered to monitor the Israeli-Arab war. In the morning the ship was circled a dozen times by low flying Nord propeller "boxcars" at mast height with
Israeli designation. The planes
flew at mast height; the men on the ship could see the teeth of the pilots as they smiled. They waved at them. The ship was flying a 4’ x 7’ American flag; it stood
straight out on a clear, breezy day. The ship had large letter designation on the bow GTR-5. The attack by
unmarked Israeli planes (Israel says the attack was an accident – the ship was an Egyptian horse carrier – less than 1/2 the size of the USS Liberty) commenced in the afternoon in International waters. After the attack with cannon, rockets, napalm and torpedo fire; the torpedo boats came back and
machine gunned the life rafts as they were thrown overboard (
a war crime according to International Law). 34 men were killed and 171wounded (out of a crew of 291) this day by the Israelis. The men on board the ship call it
murder. Captain Ward Boston was given one week to conduct an investigation of the attack. Before he died Ward Boston signed an affidavit stating that the attack on the USS Liberty was deliberate.
Many American intelligence servicemen have come forward stating they overheard the Israelis identifying the ship as American.
USS Liberty Veterans Association
Why do you miss out the most telling evidence of the encounter, that the Israeli's contacted the Americans and asked if they had any vessels in the area which the US denied. The USS Liberty being an ex WW2 freighter was exactly the same as the other nations converted freighters of the same type, and Egypt ha d a few of these vessels converted for its navy.
So the reality is that the US had a spy ship in the Med that they were asked to confirm, they denied any vessels in the area so Israel took it to be one of the Egyptian vessels and proceeded to attack it. The US flag means nothing as they can be easily bought from many places. The fact remains that once again the US were engaged in INTERNATIONAL espionage and were bitten on the arse when it went wrong
Here are the facts
USS Liberty incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
USS Liberty was originally the 7,725 long tons (7,849 t) (light) civilian cargo vessel
Simmons Victory, a mass-produced, standard-design
Victory Ship, the follow-on series to the famous
Liberty Ships, which supplied the United Kingdom and Allied troops with cargo.
Several days before the war began, the USS
Liberty was ordered to proceed to the eastern
Mediterranean area to perform a
signal intelligence collection mission in international waters near the north coast of Sinai, Egypt.
[11] After the war erupted, due to concerns about her safety as she approached her patrol area, several messages were sent to
Liberty to increase her allowable closest point of approach (CPA) to Egypt's and Israel's coasts from 12.5 and 6.5 nmi (14.4 and 7.5 mi; 23.2 and 12.0 km), respectively, to 20 and 15 nmi (23 and 17 mi; 37 and 28 km), and then later to 100 nmi (120 mi; 190 km) for both countries.
[12] Unfortunately, due to ineffective message handling and routing, the CPA change messages were not received until after the attack.
[12]
According to Israeli sources, at the start of the war on 5 June, General
Yitzhak Rabin (then IDF
Chief of Staff) informed
Commander Ernest Carl Castle, the American Naval Attaché in
Tel Aviv, that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal, including sinking unidentified ships. Also, he asked the U.S. to keep its ships away from Israel's shore or at least inform Israel of their exact position.
[13][14] Israel maintains the United States did not provide Israel any information about
Liberty's mission or location.
With the outbreak of war, Captain
William L. McGonagle of the
Liberty immediately asked
Vice Admiral William I. Martin at the
United States Sixth Fleet headquarters to send a destroyer to accompany the
Liberty and serve as its armed escort and as an auxiliary communications center. The following day, 6 June, Admiral Martin replied: "
Liberty is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation. Request denied."
[16] He promised, however, that in the unlikely event of an inadvertent attack, jet fighters from the Sixth Fleet would be overhead in ten minutes