the sailors who refused to sink

I considered another title for this article: The False Flag That Refused To Fly. The wikipedia article I excerpt below is reasonably accurate – a description that site does not always win. I also include two excellent videos at the end. This is Swamp Creature Productions at its most obvious.

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship.[3] At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 miles northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.

Israel apologized for the attack, saying that the USS Liberty had been attacked in error after being mistaken for an Egyptian ship. Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship’s identity. Others, including survivors of the attack, have rejected these conclusions and maintain that the attack was deliberate.

The nearly defenseless ‘spy ship’ was monitoring The 6-Day War off the coast of Egypt when Israeli rulers decided it would be a good target for a false flag event. The dang sailors aboard just didn’t go along with the program. Rather than disappearing into the Mediterranean Sea, they survived, kept their ship afloat and made the Israeli plan fail. Had the sailors just rolled over and died, the Israelis would have blamed their Arab enemies for sinking it. Live witnesses prevented that from happening.

Repeated machine gun strafing runs, napalm, armor piercing attacks, torpedoes … the USS Liberty should have gone down. Those sailors all deserve medals, and they got them. Amazing resilience. On the other hand, the current rulers of the DC Swamp told all surviving sailors that to speak of the event truthfully would result in life in prison.

An underappreciated key figure was the radio man who figured out that the Israelis could not block radio transmissions while attacking and who, furthermore, rigged a temporary an antenna to replace those destroyed by the fighter aircraft, reached the Sixth Fleet with their MAYDAY, that triggered a rescue attempt … which subsequently got a STAND DOWN order from the District of Criminals. Nevertheless, the attention finally saved the survivors.

Still, there was no great concern, as the planes, which circled the ship three times, could easily see its markings and its large American flag. At 10:30, a flying boxcar circled the ship at about 200 feet, slowly giving further assurance that the ship had been identified as American. This time, the plane’s Israeli markings were clearly visible. The boxcar repeated this at about 11:00 and again at 11:30.

The ship continued its patrol at very slow speed when, at 14:00, two Mirage aircraft were seen rapidly approaching the ship. Although they were unmarked, they were assumed to be Israeli planes – the Arabs did not have Mirages – and no defensive action was taken (not that it would have done much good, as the ship was only very lightly armed). Both Mirage aircraft attacked the ship. The crew was totally unprepared, and the damage was great.

Captain McGonagle immediately informed the Chief of Naval Operations: “Under attack by unidentified jet aircraft, require immediate assistance.” According to James M. Ennes, Jr., who was badly wounded in this first attack, a U.S. submarine that had been following the ship sent up its periscope and filmed the attack. He was told of this by one of the submarine’s crew, and, according to Ennes, he subsequently got confirmation from three other persons in position to know the truth. They have never spoken publicly about the matter.

The first attack lasted about five minutes. A few minutes later, three unmarked Super-Mysteres attacked with napalm and dozens of rockets. There was then a short respite, and two more Mirages, also unmarked, attacked. The entire two-part engagement lasted about 22 minutes.

Throughout the attack, the ship tried to contact Sixth Fleet headquarters, but the Israeli planes knew the frequencies of the transmission and were able to block the messages, except when the attacks were underway. During those few seconds, the radio operator, one of the many on board the Liberty who performed heroically, was able to make contact with the Sixth Fleet. The first ship to receive and acknowledge the distress signal was the carrier Saratoga, which almost immediately dispatched 12 F-4 Phantom jets and four tanker planes to defend the Liberty. The Sixth Fleet flagship, the Little Rock, which had received the messages at almost the same time, was informed, and the Liberty was told that help was on the way.

It never arrived. Very shortly after Washington got word of the attack and of the 12 planes that had been dispatched to support it, Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara personally got on the radio circuit and said, “Tell [the] Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately.” That message did get through, and the planes were recalled. In subsequent discussion of the affair, the White House directed the Pentagon to say that the Israelis had acknowledged their “mistake,” that the attack had been called off, and that the Israelis would give assistance to the ship.

Nine men had been killed and about 60 wounded. But, in spite of what the White House said, that was not the end of the Israeli action. While most of the lifeboats had been destroyed in the first attack, the ship managed to launch three, but they were immediately attacked by Israeli motor torpedo boats. The Israelis destroyed two of the lifeboats – a war crime in itself – and captured the third. The torpedo boats also fired their cannons into the ship in an apparent last attempt to sink it. The carnage continued until 171 American sailors were wounded, many severely, and 34 were killed.

When the Israelis saw that they were unable to sink the ship after more than two hours of intense attack, they offered support to the survivors. Captain McGonagle, who had been badly wounded himself, refused, and his ship limped into Malta, where 821 rocket and missile holes and more than 3,000 holes from armor piercing bullets were counted. In subsequent “explanations,” the Israelis said they had mistaken the ship for the Egyptian “al-Qusair,” although the ships’ profiles had nothing in common: the Egyptian ship displaced 2,000 tons, while the American ship displaced 10,000 tons. The Liberty was clearly marked, and it flew a standard American flag that measured five-by-eight feet. The flag was destroyed during the first attack, but it was replaced immediately by a nine-by-15 foot “holiday flag,” which remained aloft throughout the subsequent attacks. The Israelis never attempted to explain how they had acquired the frequencies on which the ship transmitted, and why they had blocked them (the Egyptian frequencies would have been quite different). Nor have they explained why their aircraft were unmarked, or why the American flag was ignored. While in Malta, most of the surviving officers and men were interviewed in several groups by Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, who ostentatiously took off the stars on his uniform in each case and said, “Now tell me, man-to-man, everything that happened.” They all did. Then, equally ostentatiously, Kidd put the stars back on and said: “Now I’m talking officially; you are never, repeat never, to discuss this with anyone, not even your wives. If you do, you will be court-martialed and will end your lives in prison or worse.” The threats were effective, and, for several years, almost no one spoke out. Ennes was the first to break the wall of silence in his extraordinary book, Assault on the Liberty, which was not published until 1979, however, and was generally ignored by the reviewers. Now almost all the survivors who can be contacted speak freely and bitterly. And no one listens.

If Americans Knew

Many stories linked here.

I hate it when this happens… I saw a current video but failed to capture the site, the link when it came my way. “The French-made torpedoes all missed our ship. It was an American made torpedo from an American ship that hit our ship.” This video is out there somewhere. I looked and looked, but apologize for not including it here.