The Day Israel Attacked America: The USS Liberty Ship Scandal

The 8th June 1967. The time was about 2pm, the Sinai Peninsula, just to the Northwest of the Egyptian city of Arish. The USS Liberty had just finished a chemical-weapons drill and its crewmen had been ordered into ‘stand down mode’, with helmets and lifejackets removed. The heat of the North African sun beat down upon the deck and the deep blue of the ocean lapped against the sides of the ship. The crew had relaxed after the intensity of the exercise, chatting amongst themselves, laughing and letting their guard down. They barely heard the drone of the airplane engines above them. They had no idea that 34 of them were about to die. This is the story of the USS Liberty disaster.

The Liberty

The Liberty itself was a small reconnaissance vessel, designed more for speed than actual battle. At the outbreak of the Six day war between Israel and several Arab nations, she had been tasked with monitoring signal transmissions off the coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Originally a cargo ship, she had a crew of 294 men, a mixture of sailors, marines and NSA scientists. Her crew were experienced but not equipped for a full military conflict. She had no shelling capabilities, only a few 50. Cal machine guns mounted along the ship.

She should have been keeping her distance. They were in the middle of a war and any unauthorised ships sighted down their coast posed the threat of invasion. The whole situation was a powder keg waiting to go off. With tensions high on all sides, a single mistake in communication could be the difference between life and death. Unfortunately, nobody’s perfect, especially when they’re scared.

The first mistakes

Reports differ on the communications being passed around between countries at the time. Israel says it warned the US at the start of the conflict on the 5th of June that it would fire on unidentified vessels off its coastline. The US denied receiving any such communication, although a warning was sent out from the Pentagon to the 6th fleet headquarters to warn the USS Liberty to go no closer than 100 nautical miles to the coastline of the Peninsular. This order failed to arrive until after the attack the following day.

The reason for the delay, according to the navy, was that there was a huge amount of high priority chatter related to the war that meant the message relay was delayed. A shortage in qualified radio men caused meant that messages throughout the fleet were being held up. This not only meant the Liberty didn’t know about the warning, it also meant that backup would be slow to get out to them if they got in trouble.