Once upon a time, the U.S. lost 34 men in a war that it did not participate in. In 1967, the Israelis launched the pre-emptive 6 Days’ War against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Pres. Lyndon Johnson kept the U.S. neutral even though the U.S. had sympathy for Israel. An American fleet monitored the war and the USS Liberty was sent to the area to conduct signals intelligence. The Liberty was an old WWII Liberty ship repurposed to be a technical research ship (similar to the USS Pueblo which was captured by North Korea). It was ordered to the waters off the north coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Messages to pull back to a safer distance were not received because of faulty Navy communications. On June 8, the ship cruised about 20 miles off the coast. What followed was a series of screwups by the Israeli military, officially. The dominoes began to fall when shelling of an Israeli city was reported. The Israelis assumed it was an Egyptian destroyer and sent several torpedo boats to inspect. They picked up an unidentified ship on radar and reported that it was moving at a crisp 28 knots to the west. The rule was that any unidentified ship moving faster than 20 knots was a target. The Liberty was about as capable of that speed as a fat guy in a rowboat. Two jet fighters passed over and reported no markings or flag, so despite the shakiness of the identification, they were cleared to attack. The ship was totally unprepared for an attack from friendly aircraft. The 30 mm. cannons and rockets did a lot of damage. When they were done, two new fighters took their place and bombed the ship with napalm! At this point, Israeli control made another attempt to identify the ship. The fact that it was not defending itself was suspicious. A quick check proved no Israeli ships were in the area so the green light was once again given. This time, on a strafing pass, one of the fighters spotted markings using Latin numbers. Since Arab ships did not use these numerals, the ship could not be an enemy ship. The fighters were called off. Meanwhile, the crew had put up a large flag. At this point, the torpedo boats arrived. They identified the outline as that of an Egyptian ship. A flag was never spotted by any Israeli, officially. Attempts to signal were unsuccessful due to the Liberty’s communications being all shot up. Captain William McConagle (who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership) signaled using an Aldis lamp, but the Israeli commander remembered the Arabs using that trick before, plus the Liberty briefly opened fire with a machine gun (who could blame them?) before the captain ordered cease fire. Oh, it was on again, said the Israelis, who put a torpedo in the ship’s side and then strafed the damage control attempts. Life boats were fired on! Finally, upon circling the flaming wreck, the Israelis said “oops!” and stopped the assault. 34 sailors were dead and 171 were wounded. Israel sincerely apologized and the Vietnam-burdened Johnson accepted it. Investigations by both countries determined it was an accident. You could never convince the crew of the Liberty of that and several historians have questioned the official findings. Could all of those dominoes have been due to misunderstandings and human error? It seems unlikely. However, Israel would seemingly have had enough on its plate already without adding a kerfuffle with a superpower friend. Considering the fog of war and the desire of some pilots and torpedo boat captains to “get some”, I tend to believe it was a classic example of SNAFU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/israel-attacks-uss-liberty
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