Yes I went to the site, this time and the last time this topic came up on this forum . Lots of photos of a very damaged ship, damaged gun tubes, damaged antenna masts, big bellybutton torpedo hole, and a lot of wounded guys in hospital beds a photo taken from a ship of a very low c47 flying past . I also read many of the articles . It is an intriguing subject and there have been many US investigations into it. We're up to ten now I believe ? The stories differ greatly, for instance according to that site the Liberty was in international waters . I did learn that the USS Liberty was actually just a wwII freighter stuffed full of sigint equipment . If it is true that the gunboat crews did take one of the lifeboats with them, that is odd indeed .
Samm
Hey, I obviously don't know personally what happened. But there are a lot of "odd" things at work that just don't jibe with a conventional friendly fire incident, IMO. The Israeli version works to paint it as such, but the attack seems too coordinated, excessive, and sophisticated (jamming ops, etc.) and most of all too long to be a conventional friendly fire incident.
Usually, friendly fire incidents seem to be generated by poor individual judgment combined with poor intel or somehow managing to overlook or misuse good intel. The mistake is typically recognized quickly and corrected.
Now, I can buy fighter pilots not knowing one ship from another, though eventually they might recognize it as an American vessle with the sat antenna (rare for the time) hull numbers, and clean gray "USN" appearence. It was a WW2 vessle but it was a larger, much more distinctive vessle in its Intel role. With one quick attack this is viable, IMO.
There are claims that two pilots recognized the ship as American, refused to attack and served prison time under threat for theri actions, but to my mind these are "rumor" level quality until evidence comes forward.
The jamming is harder to explain. You could assume that jamming is a standard practice against any naval target, sophisticated or not, to prevent the ship from calling for help, or even to practice jamming techniques for future engagments against higher threat targets. However, the crew notes it was targeted jamming, and that such targeting requires a sophisticated knowledge of the comm system being attacked.
Various versions of who knew the ship was there when, also come into play. The crew noted numerous close overflights up until an hour before the attack. Israelis claim to havel lost track of the ship shortly before the attack, allowing it to fall through the cracks. It's also been claimed that there was Israeli hostility towards the ship's presence and the the US had been warned to get it out of there in some way. I guess my problem with this "lost track" version is that with a a multi-force mission of this nature, involving air and naval forces with jamming, against a single point target, much more attention is focused on the mission at hand, making mistakes less likely though still possible. There is an Israeli version where the PT boats sighted the ship and called in the air attack, but critics say that the attack was far too coordinated, and led by the air element (and throw in the jamming), for that version to be true.
As a final note, the actions of the PT boats, the time spent on station and their actions on station are disturbing to me as well. This and the type of targeted frequency jamming.
While I don't buy the "official line" I could see some of the following scenarios. Of course, there may be others, with other motivations, that no one has considered to date:
1. Samm, as you point out, it could be a mistake that is detected by the pilots/sailors but that someone higher up refuses to believe. It would explain the crew's established duration of the attack while still allowing it to be an accidental incident. My only problem with this, really, is the jamming and the amount of force focused on the "initial" target of the raid. The PT boat actions, as you note, are also odd.
2. A rogue commander, who decides it's in Israel's best interests to make sure the Golan operation is successful. Israel didn't need much time to achieve this goal, and could have done it regardless of American interference, but if we detect the move in its inital stages US pressure could have been significant, particularly since we were trying to keep the USSR out of the war. Higher-ups become aware too late.
3. A decision made higher up for the same reasons noted above, and perhaps to send a message that "it pays to take our advice about where you put your ships." A bad call? Hard to say really, if this was what happend and the worst case scenario transpired Israel didn't really pay for it in any significant way. The US political situation in 1967 was chaotic and this was one thing the Johnson Admin really didn't need. Perhaps, through back channels, the Israeli's even made some more pointed suggestions/warnings before the attack (move it or...). Remember, the Six-Day-War was an amazing Blitzkrieg. It was a heady time for Isralei battlefield and political leaders, who had shown plenty of agressiveness in the past, and who, like Dian, were willing to take unconventional actions to achieve their goals. It is a potential environment for overconfidence, ego and poor decisionmaking (made with sevear time constraints) where the ends justified the means to a handful of people making the decisions.
[edit: 4. Another possibility, an accidental attack where a "coverup" was attempted (by field commanders or higher ups)by making the ship disappear after the initial mistake. Have to look at the timing of the jamming. IMO, this may be the most likely even.
The PT boats did identify the ship as an Egyptian horse carrier, traveling at 28-30 kts (15 kts max speed for the liberty) and somehow missed the very large sat dish. From the official Israeli findings:
The The Division Commander was ordered to approach the ship
in order to establish visual contact and to identify it. The order
was carried out, and the Commander reported that the ship appeared to be a merchant or supply vessel. The Division Commander also signalled the ship and requested its identification, but the latter replied with a signal meaning "identify yourself first". Meanwhile the Division Commander was consulting and perusing a book on the identification of Arab Navies and making comparison with the target seen by him, he came to the conclusion that he was confronting an Egyptian Supply ship by the name of "El-Kasir". At the same time the commander of another torpedo boat of the division informed him that he also had identified the ship as the Egyptian "El-Kasir", and then at 14.36 hours the Division Commander authorized the division to attack with torpedoes. And in fact a torpedo was fired at the ship and hit
it. Only at a later stage, when one of the torpedo boats approached the ship from the other side were the markings "CTR-5" noticed on the hull, and then the final order was given to break off the attack. (The crew contends the attack went on for another 40 minutes after this point, with the machine gunning, etc.)]
Unfortunately, we may never know for sure. There have been a number of Investigations over the years, but there was never a exhaustive one (comprable to the Stark, etc.) from the us govt. There was almost an anti investigation, with odd behavior by the US admin during and after the attack, and no small amount of Congressional fear about dealing with the incident, both then and now.
Charon
