1967 — June 8, USS Liberty attacked by Israeli Air and Naval Craft ~Sinai Peninsula — 34

— 34 Naval Historical Center. “FAQs…Casualties: U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Personnel…”
— 34 Scott, J. The Attack on the Liberty…Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship. 2009, p.3.
— 34 Stein, Jeff. “Israeli Pilots Knew US Spy Ship Was American Before 1967 War Attack.”

Narrative Information

Scott: “Prologue:
‘I know what a slaughterhouse looks like. That’s what this was.’ – Petty Officer 3rd Class
Gary Brummett.

“Captain William L. McGonagle mustered his men. On June 8, 1997, the skipper gathered with his remaining crew in front of grave #1817 in section 34 of Arlington National Cemetery. Beneath the single granite headstone rested the unidentified remains of six of McGonagle’s men. Eight others lay in individual graves amid manicured lawns and rolling hills of the nation’s military cemetery on the banks of the Potomac River.

“McGonagle had commanded the U.S.S. Liberty, a spy ship the Israelis strafed and torpedoed in what the Washington Post later described as ‘one of the most bloody and bizarre peacetime encounters in U.S. naval history.’ On this this humid morning – the thirtieth anniversary of that dreadful day – McGonagle finally was ready to speak….

“Dressed in starched Navy whites, McGonagle [then 71] was dying. Within months, doctors would remove a portion of his cancerous left lung, leaving him mostly wheelchair bound. In twenty-two months, a team of six horses would deliver McGonagle’s flag-draped remains to a hilltop grave overlooking the spot where he now stood. This would be his last chance to address his men about what had happened that sunny afternoon three decades earlier in the eastern Mediterranean. He didn’t disappoint them.

“On June 8, 1967, the Israeli Air Force and Navy pounded the Liberty as the ship trolled alone in international waters off the coast of the Gaza Strip, eavesdropping on the war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The attack killed thirty-four American sailors and injured 171 others in the most deadly assault on an American ship since the U.S.S. Indianapolis was torpedoed in the waning days of World War II.

“The specter of the Liberty has haunted the U.S. Navy and intelligence community for decades. The underlying question the attack raised in 1967 still resonates: How do politics and diplomacy impact battlefield decisions? In the case of the Liberty, the White House [Lyndon B. Johnson, President], afraid of offending Israel’s domestic backers at a time when it needed support for its Vietnam policy, looked the other way. Likewise, Congress failed to formally investigate the attack or hold public hearings. No one was ever punished. ….

“The attack on the Liberty began when Israeli fighter jets hammered the ship with rockets and cannons. Napalm turned the deck into a 3,000-degree inferno. Torpedo boats soon followed, ripping a hole thirty-nine feet wide and twenty-four feet tall in the ship’s steel skin. The approximately hour-long attack spared no one. Stretcher bearers were shot, sailors burned, liferafts sunk.

“Armor-piercing bullets zinged through the ship’s bulkheads and shattered coffee mugs, lodged in navigation books, and rolled about on the deck floors. Investigators later counted 821 shell holes, come created with American-made munitions used by Israeli forces. ‘There wasn’t any place that was safe,’ one of the officers later recalled. ‘If it was your day to get hit, you were going to get hit.’

“For nearly seventeen hours, McGonagle and his men fought to save the ship. The injured and dying crowded the mess deck, where corpsmen converted lunch tables to gurneys. Transfusions were given arm to arm. Uninjured sailors learned to stitch up wounds. The ship’s lone doctor performed surgery by the light of a battle lantern.

“On the bridge, McGonagle, suffering a concussion, his leg peppered with shrapnel, steered the Liberty out to sea as it spewed classified documents and oil from the torpedoed hole. With the navigation system largely destroyed, McGonagle studied the ship’s wake and ordered turns of the rudder. That evening, he steered by the stars. Crewmen on the bow aimed signal lights skyward, hoping to alert American rescue planes and helicopters to the Liberty’s position. None came….

“Israel apologized within hours of the attack, blaming it on a series of tactical blunders that culminated in its forces mistakenly concluding that the Liberty was an Egyptian horse and troop transport ship. The White House eagerly accepted the apology.

“The Navy barred its investigators from traveling to Israel to interview pilots and torpedo boat skippers. The inquiry lasted just eight days – less time than it took to bury some of the dead. The Navy’s top-secret final report proved a muddles mess with typos, misspellings, and contradictory findings.

“The declassified summary released to the press on June 28, 1967, concluded that the attack by Israeli forces was most likely an accident, but it also ruled that it had insufficient information to determine reasons for the assault….

“Unbeknownst to his men, McGonagle had quietly conducted his own inquiry. He hammered out letters over the years to the Navy, the State Department, and the National Archives, demanding files on the attack. He poured through records from the Navy’s court of inquiry and sifted through yellowed memos, diaries, and telegrams at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Texas. His questions were many. Why were the fighter jets that had been sent to help the Liberty suddenly recalled? Why did it take almost seventeen hours for help to arrive?….

“McGonagle also examined Israel’s story. He questioned how pilots and torpedo boat commanders from one of the world’s top militaries confuse the Liberty with an aged Egyptian transport ship a fraction of its size. Why didn’t the Israelis fire warning shots across the bow or try to stop the Liberty before torpedoing it? How had the attackers on a clear afternoon failed to spot the American flag or freshly painted hull markings in an assault that raged for approximately an hour?

“After all these years, McGonagle now had something to say. ‘For many years I had wanted to believe that the attack on the Liberty was pure error. It appears to me that it was not a pure case of mistaken identity,’ McGonagle told his men. ‘I think that it’s about time that the state of Israel and the United States government provide the crewmembers of the Liberty, and the rest of the American people, the facts of what happened.’….

Stein: “Israeli air control twice told pilots during the 1967 Six Day War that a U.S. spy ship they were attacking was American, according to a new book on the USS Liberty affair. Israel has always claimed that the June 8, 1967 attack on the spy ship Liberty, which killed 34 U.S. Navy sailors and wounded another 170, many seriously, was a case of mistaken identity, a ‘tragic accident.’ But according to “The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship,” by James Scott, Israeli pilots who radioed the Liberty’s hull number to their air controller were told two times that the spy ship was “probably American.” Nevertheless, Israeli fighters jets and torpedo boats continued to attack the spy ship, which was flying an American flag and plying international waters as it monitored Israeli and Egyptian radio traffic during the June 1967 war.

“Israel’s goal in the brutal air and sea assault on the Liberty was twofold, says Scott…to prevent the spy ship from learning about Israeli troop movements, and to kill anyone aboard who could later identify the attacking aircraft as Israeli….Israel never wavered from its stance that the attack on the Liberty was anything but a mistake, although angry U.S. officials had quickly concluded it was deliberate.

“Besides repeatedly raking the defenseless ship with cannon fire and bombs, Israeli jets also dropped napalm on American sailors running about the deck trying to save the ship, reports Scott, an award winning former reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier.” (Stein, Jeff. “Israeli Pilots Knew US Spy Ship Was American Before 1967 War Attack.”)

Sources

Naval Historical Center. “Frequently Asked Questions, Casualties: U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Personnel Killed and Wounded in Wars, Conflicts, Terrorist Acts, and Other Hostile Incidents.” Washington DC: Dept. of the Navy. At: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq56-1.htm
Also at: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AMH/AMH-USNchron.htm

Scott, James. The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. Google preview accessed 4-20-2022 at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Attack_on_the_Liberty/72cI13uPqGMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+Attack+on+the+Liberty:+The+Untold+Story+of+Israel%27s+Deadly+1967+Assault+on+a+U.S.+Spy+Ship&printsec=frontcover

Stein, Jeff. “Israeli Pilots Knew US Spy Ship Was American Before 1967 War Attack.” CQ Politics, June 8, 2009.