PART 3:THE ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY:The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship

JAMES M. ENNES JR.

 ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY 

The True Story of the Israeli Attack 

on an American Intelligence Ship 

Chapter 5 

THE GAZA STRIP 

A commander must train his subordinate commanders, and his own staff, to work and act on verbal orders. Those who cannot be trusted to act on clear and concise verbal orders, but want everything in writing, are useless. 

Montgomery of Alamein, Memoirs, III (1958) 

Custom in the Navy calls for relieving the watch fifteen minutes before the hour. The 0400-0800 watch on Liberty was ordinarily relieved much earlier to allow time for the off-going section to have breakfast before morning quarters. Thus, I appeared on the bridge shortly after seven o'clock to find Ensign John Scott, the ship's conscientious young damage control officer, scanning the shore with his binoculars. "Fabulous morning," John said, continuing to peer through the binoculars as he briefed me on the watch conditions, boilers in use, ship's course and speed, wind speed and direction, both actual and relative to the ship, barometric pressure, readiness condition. 

"We now have ammunition at all four machine guns," John told me. "Men are on duty in battle dress in the two forward gun mounts, which makes our readiness condition Condition Three, modified. The Old Man is taking no chances! The guns behind the bridge are unmanned. In case of trouble the lookouts will man the guns while General Quarters is being set." 

"Pretty scary," I said. 

"There is still a lot of shooting around here. Passed Port Said during the night. Don't know what was happening, but the sky around the city was filled with smoke and fire all night long. About an hour ago," he continued, still searching the beach for an identifiable landmark, "we were circled by a flying boxcar. Real slow and . easy. And every few minutes a fat little prop plane, maybe a light bomber, comes down the beach, just skimming the sand dunes. Haven't seen any fighting here, though." 

I relieved John at 0720, agreeing with him as he mentioned the difficulty of accurately fixing the ship's position along this nondescript coastline. I was relieved to see the village of El Arish appear ahead of us on our left. A minaret on my navigation chart could be seen towering over the cluster of brown desert buildings, and provided the only distinctive feature in sight. By plotting the minaret's bearing and the radar-determined distances to the minaret and to the nearest beach to my left, I was able to obtain a reasonable fix. Readings from the ship's Fathometer corresponded well with what the sketchy fix told me the depth of the water should be. Acutely conscious of the international uproar that might be caused by any inadvertent penetration of the claimed United Arab Republic waters, I was particularly cautious. Compass and equipment errors, plus any errors of my own, could combine with inaccuracies in the chart to put me far from where I thought we were. (This is why navigation is known as art; it is far too inexact to pretend toward science.) I resolved to fix the ship's position every ten or fifteen minutes, instead of every thirty minutes as Captain McGonagle usually required in coastal waters. 

On the bridge, everyone was alert and doing his job. On duty was a signalman; a quartermaster in charge of the men and responsible for keeping a notebook record of watch conditions and orders given, including all course and speed changes; a helmsman; an engine-order telegraph operator whose job was to relay orders to the engine room; and two lookouts. In an adjoining room was a radar operator, and on the bridge was a radar scope for my use as officer of the deck. 

I noticed that the ship's five-by-eight-foot American flag was fouled, having become tangled in the lines. The flag was dark with soot and badly tattered from the high-speed steaming of the past few days. I ordered it replaced. 

Soon Signalman Russell David appeared at my side, clearly agitated. "Sir, I'd like to keep that flag up there!" he said, with an insistence that surprised me. Greatly frustrated, he complained that he had only one flag left. Several had been ruined during the trip, most were worn or badly stained, and the only presentable flags left were the special over sized "holiday colors" and the one new flag that I insisted upon using. 

"We must fly the new flag," I said, explaining that we were operating in a dangerous area and could afford to show only our clearest, brightest colors. 

Obviously irritated, David hauled his last new flag high on the ship's mast. I watched it fly freely, then instructed David and both lookouts to check the flag regularly to assure that it remained free and unfouled. Normally composed, David seemed barely able to contain his anger. His mood seemed to me to mirror the unease that still troubled most of the crew. 

On the weather decks below I could see the crew assembling for morning quarters, Philip in crisp khaki, standing apart to receive the reports of his department heads. Stan White, taking my part as division officer, reported results of the roll call to Dave Lewis, who assembled reports from his divisions and finally joined the smaller rank facing Philip while men shuffled about in ranks quietly. After receiving the usual reports, Philip advised the department heads of a General Quarters drill scheduled after lunch, returned their salutes and departed. The "word" thus received was passed along to division officers and ultimately to "the man in the back rank." Today there were also reminders to the men that we were skirting a hot, shooting war. No trouble was expected, the men were told, but anything could happen in wartime and everyone had to remain alert. 

Morning quarters completed, I called the TRSSCOMM room to check on the status of the equipment. Stan White was already there and reported that all was going well. The equipment would be ready on schedule at 1400. The moon would be in a good position then to talk to Cheltenham. We felt good about it. We could control the small hydraulic leaks that remained. Now, with the electronics in shape, we were optimistic that the system would continue to operate. 

When the duty quartermaster cried out,. "Captain's on the bridge," I quickly reviewed the vital statistics of course, speed, weather and so forth in case he should ask. I told the captain about the bomber that had been seen near the beach, and we discussed the flying boxcar that had been seen on John's watch.

As the ship arrived at the predesignated Point Alfa from our operating orders (31-27.2N 34-00E), I changed course toward Point Bravo, fifteen miles ahead (31-22.3N 33-42E). This turn would bring the ship to her initial patrol course parallel to the Gaza Strip near the Egyptian/Israeli border and headed toward Port Said, ninety miles to the west. 

"Right ten degrees rudder," I ordered the helmsman, who repeated, "Right ten degrees rudder, aye, sir," to acknowledge the order; then, "My rudder is right ten degrees, sir"; then, "Passing course one seven zero," as he reported the ship's progress swinging about in her turn. I intended to bring the ship to her new course by rudder orders, directing movement of the rudder rather than giving the helmsman the new course. As I gauged the turn on a compass repeater on the port wing of the bridge, a lookout on the open bridge above called out: "Airplane passing astern, sir!" 

"Steady on course two five three," I ordered the helmsman, abandoning my sport with the rudder in order not to overshoot the new course while checking the airplane. 

Together, Captain McGonagle and I watched a single jet pass down Liberty's starboard side, then turn left several miles ahead of the ship and vanish, apparently toward the Gaza Strip along the coast to our left. The airplane was not close enough to make out any markings. At Captain McGonagle's direction I prepared a message report of the sighting to forward to higher authority, and had a messenger deliver it to Lieutenant Steve Toth, who was the ship's navigator and intelligence officer. 

Captain McGonagle asked quietly, typically careful not to embarrass me before the men, if I had ordered the speed change from fifteen to five knots, which was to have been accomplished at Point Alfa. He knew the answer without asking, of course. Distracted by the airplane, I had forgotten the speed change. I quickly ordered the scheduled five-knot speed. The ship settled into her usual patrol posture, barely moving along a barren coastline in balmy weather, rolling gently. I checked the flag. It was standing out in eight knots of relative wind, clearly displayed for anyone who might look. 

Off-duty men now occupied the forecastle, sunbathing on blankets and lounge chairs. Many commanding officers are offended by the sight of men relaxing during normal working hours, a condition that causes extreme hardship for men who happen to work irregular hours. Captain McGonagle had no such problem; through his executive officer, he encouraged off-duty men to relax. His attitude was one of the reasons for the very high morale on board. 

Just before ten o'clock the bridge lookouts reported jet fighters approaching from astern. I could see the gunners lounging about, talking with swim suited shipmates. Using a sound-powered telephone extension on the gunnery circuit, I told the men to wake up and keep a sharp lookout, warning them that unidentified aircraft were in the area. 

Off the starboard side, high, I could see two sleek delta-wing jets in tight side-by-side formation, paralleling our course. 1 Although they were close enough that I could count numerous rockets hanging in clusters under each wing, I could not see any identification markings. The airplanes turned left well ahead of us, then left again and passed down our port side. I again checked the flag: still standing straight out in a light breeze, clearly visible. I watched the airplanes through my binoculars. I could see the pilots. I decided that if! could see the pilots in their cockpits, the pilots could certainly see our flag and no doubt our ship's name and number. They made three complete orbits of the ship before disappearing from view. 

Since I was quite busy with coastal piloting, trying to assure our staying as close as possible to our assigned track, Steve Toth agreed to draft the sighting report. I called the captain to inform him of the armed reconnaissance. 

It seemed to me that the lookouts, particularly the men in the forward gun mounts, were still not giving their job anywhere near the degree of attention it required. They were gawking, stretching, loafing and visiting with friends; they were doing everything but acting like lookouts. I called the quartermaster of the watch to the port wing of the bridge and asked him to talk individually with each lookout-four in all-to stress the importance of being alert and attentive and to ensure that they did nothing but scan the sea and sky around us for ships and airplanes. They were to have no visitors. They were to devote their full time and attention to looking for contacts. 

The quartermaster returned in a few minutes to tell me that the lookouts had no binoculars, that they found it difficult to be serious lookouts without binoculars. 

"Where are their binoculars?"

"Lieutenant Toth

"Lieutenant Toth took them." 

Seamen George Wilson and Larry Slavens, bridge lookouts, were on a deck above me. These men had been issued binoculars; but every hour they rotated with the forward lookouts, and when they did they left their binoculars on the bridge. I called Wilson down from his station on the starboard wing of the 04 level. 

"What happened to the forward lookouts' binoculars?" 

"Lieutenant Toth took them." 

"Are you sure? Why would he take the lookouts' binoculars?" 

"I don't know, Mr. Ennes. When we first came on watch we all had binoculars, but Mr. Toth collected them from the men in the gun mounts and locked them up in the chart house. He said we didn't need them. He said that if we kept them they'd only get banged up." 

"Has anyone ever taken your binoculars away before when you were a lookout?" I asked. 

"No, sir, never. I asked Mr. Toth about it myself when he was on the bridge a while ago, and he said the same thing. He told me, 'You don't need them and they'll just get banged up.' " 

In a few minutes I called Steve on the bridge telephone to ask him to reissue binoculars. He refused, but promised to come to the bridge to talk with me about it. In the meantime he was busy preparing sighting reports and I was busy with control of the ship. 

At about 1030 we received another visit from the flying boxcar, now more curious and coming closer. Watching the airplane through binoculars, I told the quartermaster to call the captain by telephone to inform him of the visit. The airplane paralleled our course to starboard, turning left in front of the ship in a pattern that was now becoming routine. Another left tum and he appeared on our port side. Again I checked our flag, found it flying freely as usual, and noted that the relative wind was still from dead ahead and of sufficient speed to display the colors clearly. 

"Well, they certainly know who we are by now, don't they?" said Captain McGonagle, who had come to the bridge quickly in response to the telephone call. "It's good that they are checking us out this carefully. This way there won't be any mistakes. Early this afternoon they'll probably come out by boat to give us a closer look." 

We stood next to a railing on the port wing of the bridge, where we could see our flag at the mast and see the airplane at the same time. As we talked, the pilot, who was now on our port quarter and headed away from the ship, suddenly executed a near 360-degree tum. Banking sharply, a wing tip of this huge, lumbering mastodon of the air threatened to dip into the sea. Completing the tum, the airplane headed directly back toward Liberty at a very low level, probably not more than two hundred feet above the water. 

As the airplane drew closer, we could see the details of its construction: wheel wells, seams, rivets that held the airplane together, a Star of David that identified it as Israeli, large belly doors. 

"Watch him," McGonagle yelled over the sound of aircraft engines. "If you see those bomb bay doors start to open, order an immediate hard right tum." 

I held my breath until the airplane passed overhead. The very low altitude caused her engine noises to reverberate between ship and airplane, setting up a vibration that caused the decks to shudder. Mercifully, the doors remained closed. As the airplane passed overhead, I noticed smaller openings, which I guessed were camera ports. 2 

After the captain left the bridge, I called Steve Toth to advise him of this latest visit and of the Israeli identification markings. 

The flying boxcar returned just before eleven o'clock and again thirty minutes later, each time executing the now-familiar counterclockwise orbit before completing a low-level, diagonal, direct overflight of the ship. And each time, I verified the condition of our flag. 

Near the end of my watch, Steve Toth came on the bridge to return a publication that he had taken to the captain. He was upset because the sighting reports had not yet been released by the captain so that they could be sent on their way. 

"Shep won't release 'em," Steve told me. "First, he wanted to see Jane's [Jane's All the World's Aircraft]. Then he wanted to see the reporting instructions. Now he's quibbling about the wording." 

"At this rate we'll never get them all reported," I said. "Let's describe the boxcar as returning every thirty or forty minutes. That way we can save a few messages." 

By this time we had both forgotten about the binoculars. 

At 1130 the ship arrived at Point Bravo. I executed a right tum to new course 283°, heading the ship toward the point designated Charlie in our operating orders. At Charlie (31-31N 33-00E), the ship was to reverse course, retracing the dogleg pattern every ten hours until further orders were received.

Coastal piloting remained difficult because of the apparent chart errors and the lack of prominent features on the landscape. Radar was little help now because of the barren and indistinct beach. The duty radar man in "Combat", (the combat information center) kept a separate plot, which agreed reasonably with mine. I was satisfied with my track, but uneasy that the only positive visual landmark remained the minaret at El Arish. I hoped for a prominent rock or other feature to strengthen my fix. 

Suddenly a huge explosion rocked the town of El Arish. The little bomber that had patrolled the beach all morning could no longer be seen. Did it bomb the town, I wondered. Did it crash? And how shaky will my track become if the minaret falls? I located Captain McGonagle in the wardroom to tell him of the fire and smoke ashore. 

At noon, thick black smoke extending for miles along the beach, Lieutenant Painter appeared, ready to take the afternoon watch. Easygoing, always smiling Lloyd was quite relaxed about the whole thing as I told him of the bomber, the jets, the flying boxcar, the explosion ashore and the location of Point Charlie ahead. 

A criminologist by training, Lloyd had the short, solid, muscular build of a bulldog. He also had the bulldog's confidence, good humor and what-the-hell outlook. Typically, he seemed already to have forgotten about the incident at Rota with the government agent. At least, he wasn't worrying about it. I promised to return in an hour to relieve him for the scheduled General Quarters drill, and headed for the wardroom for lunch.

**************** 

During my morning watch, quite unknown to us, Vice Admiral Martin dealt with the JCS order to move Liberty one hundred miles from the coast, having received the order from Admiral McCain's headquarters by Teletype conference at 0645, Liberty time. 

Admiral Martin's staff was aware of Liberty's sense of danger, for Liberty had requested an armed escort. The Sixth Fleet staff was also aware of Liberty's vulnerable position: a message to COMSIXTHFLT promised her 0900 arrival at Point Alfa, 12.5 miles from the coast. 

One would suppose that staff officers would be moved to extraordinary measures to order the ship promptly to sea, since it was now obvious that Liberty was within sight of the fighting and was some ninety miles past the closest point of approach established by JCS. And moving her would have been simple indeed. It would have been a very easy matter to pick up a radiotelephone handset on the flagship and establish immediate voice contact with Liberty's officer of the deck. But COMSIXTHFLT chose not to use that means. It would also have been simple to establish direct two-way Teletype communication between COMSIXTHFLT and Liberty. Privacy would have been protected by scrambler devices, and this method would have provided a written record of what was said. This was the method, after all, that CINCUSNAVEUR used when he ordered COMSIXTHFL T to recall Liberty. But COMSIXTHFLT chose not to use that means, either. 

Liberty was an information addressee on both of the key JCS messages.3 COMSIXTHFLT might have supposed that Liberty had received the JCS messages and had moved away from the coast without waiting for the order to be echoed by lesser commanders. COMSIXTHFLT might have supposed that, but he would not have relied upon it. Duty required COMSIXTHFLT to move Liberty away from the coast, and COMSIXTHFLT set about doing just that. He simply failed to attach to the matter the same urgency that JCS attached to it. 

COMSIXTHFLT drafted an ordinary Teletype message for ordinary delivery through the land-based communication relay system-ignoring the more rapid means available. He treated the order, in other words, as a routine administrative detail, and tossed it into the already clogged communication system to compete with grocery orders, leave requests and spare parts requisitions. It took four hours to draft the message and deliver it to the communication center. It took another hour and eighteen minutes for the communication center to prepare the message for transmission and to transmit it. At 1235, Liberty time, COMSIXTHFLT'S message directing the ship to move away from the coast was transmitted to the Naval Communication Station in Morocco for ultimate delivery to Liberty. 4 

****************

After a quick sandwich and glass of milk in the wardroom pantry, I climbed down two more decks to find Jim O'Connor and Maury Bennett still hard at work in Co-ord. Most of the other officers were happily sunning themselves in deck chairs on the roof of the forward deckhouse, but O'Connor found little time for rest. "So much work," he muttered, almost as a greeting. Bennett gave me a pained look.

No doubt thinking of O'Connor's likely approach to nervous exhaustion, Bennett suggested that he get some fresh air and a change of scenery by taking the bridge watch during General Quarters. "Good idea," O'Connor said. 

It would be his first appearance on deck in several days. 

O'Connor was the regular officer of the deck for General Quarters -an assignment that put him on the bridge in charge of the ship and all shipboard operations during actual or simulated combat. I was to have relieved him of that duty in Abidjan, but the executive officer had been too busy to change the watch bill. Consequently, with Philip's blessing, I had been taking most of the assignments even though O'Connor was still officially the officer of the deck. Today, we would both stand the watch; O'Connor would take the OOD position and I would assist. 

I wandered about the ship, spending a few minutes talking with technicians in the TRSSCOMM room as they conducted a careful countdown with their cantankerous patient. I found the ship's photographer, Petty Officer Charles L. Rowley, in the photo lab where he had been for most of the morning, and asked him to meet me on the bridge after General Quarters so that we could try again to get a good picture of our aerial visitors. Finally, I climbed the five decks from Co-ord to the bridge and watched Lloyd Painter work while I waited for him to sound the General Quarters alarm. During my absence from the bridge, the ship had been reconnoitered two more times by the flying boxcar. 

The alarm sounded at 1310. The drill was prompted by news reports, later proving erroneous, of poison gas being used in the fighting ashore; so this was a gas attack drill. Men responded quickly, rapidly sealing all doors and other openings in order to make of the ship a gas-tight envelope impervious to the atmosphere outside. The pilothouse sealed, we saw the sea ahead only through the small peep slots cut into the heavy steel battle coverings of the pilothouse portholes. Captain McGonagle evaluated the drill promptly and shifted attention to fire and damage-control drills. 

****************

As we responded to the gas attack alarm, CINCUSNA VEUR received his information copy of the COMSIXTHFLT message that ordered Liberty away from the coast. Liberty should have received her action copy of the message at about the same time, but she didn't. That copy was now following a labyrinthine path through the communication system, which passed it about almost aimlessly, like a leaf afloat in a pond. Liberty's copy of the message ultimately arrived at the Army Communication Station in Asmara, Ethiopia, for relay to the Naval Communication Station in Asmara for delivery to Liberty via the fleet broadcast that that station operates. But at 1348, as word was passed over the ship's general announcing system to ''secure from general quarters; secure from all drills," Liberty's message waited its turn at a transmitting position at the Asmara Army Communication Station, which would, in a few moments, misdirect it to the Naval Communication Station in Greece, where it would remain for the next three hours. 

****************

On the bridge, Painter relieved O'Connor as OOD. Battle helmets made clunking sounds as men dropped them into storage racks, glad to return to cooler headgear. Telephone talkers wound long telephone cables, filthy from years of dragging over sooty decks, to stow the equipment in waterproof telephone storage boxes. On the forecastle, men lingered in the gun mounts to talk with the gunners and to examine the machine guns (usually stored elsewhere), while the sunbathers returned with towels and deck chairs. 

"It's good that we have sunbathers on deck," said McGonagle. "It helps to show that we're peaceful." 

Using the ship's general announcing system, McGonagle complimented the men on the fine drill and reminded them, once again, of our potentially dangerous position and of the need to respond promptly to all alarms, as one could be genuine. To illustrate his concern, he mentioned the shooting war to our left and told the men of the large fire at EI Arish, whose black smoke still threatened to obscure the town from our view. In conclusion, he mentioned that the local forces knew Liberty was here, having made numerous aerial reconnaissance sorties during the morning, and told the men-as he had told me earlier-that we could expect boats to visit us during the afternoon for a closer look. 

A bridge telephone talker, still winding his cable but not yet unplugged from his terminal, received and relayed advice from Combat of three high-speed aircraft, sixteen miles away, approaching the ship from 082°, the general direction of the Israeli capital, Tel Aviv. Then Combat corrected the report, now advising that "the contacts are fading; they appear to be weather." 

Although no longer an official member of the bridge team on duty, I told the talker to advise Combat that air contacts often look like clouds or small rain squalls when spotted on surface-search radar equipment, that Combat should continue to watch the contacts carefully. The report was then corrected again. The radar operator now described three high-speed surface contacts at the same bearing and range as the air contacts, and moving toward the ship at thirty-five knots: "Captain, you gotta look at this! I never saw anything move so fast," Lloyd Painter cried, having spotted the boats on the bridge radar repeater. 

The drill over, ship's routine business resumed. Word was passed: "Stand clear of the motor whaleboat while testing engines." This was a routine test, performed daily while at sea. 

I sat loosely on a wing of the bridge, perched on a cover of the starboard running light where I could best see in the direction of the expected aircraft. The captain stood nearby. Jim O'Connor, the XO and some of the men who had been on the bridge during the drill stayed to see the expected airplanes. Petty Officer Rowley, the ship's photographer, appeared, as I had asked him to. 

The first to spot the visitor, I pointed to a single delta-wing Mirage jet about 45 degrees above the water, paralleling our course in the pattern that had become routine. I stayed until I was sure Captain McGonagle saw the airplane, then headed toward the open bridge on the 04 level above. Racing toward a permanently mounted telescope on the port side, I found Rowley already there with the ship's Nikon camera and a clumsy telephoto lens. Several sailors gathered for a clear view of the airplanes. As I swung the ship's telescope to starboard for a closer look at the jet, Rowley called, "Mr. Ennes, he's not· there. He's up ahead!" 

O'Connor, to my right, searched the sky with his binoculars as I glanced forward. 

Chapter 6 

AIR ATTACK 

Imagine all the earthquakes in the world, and all the thunder and lightnings together in a space of two miles, all going off at once. 

Description by unknown U.S. Army officer 

of night engagement when Farragut ran 

Forts Jackson and St Philip, April 34, 1863 

Searing heat and terrible noise came suddenly from everywhere. Instinctively I turned sideways, presenting the smallest target to the heat. Heat came first, and it was heat-not cannon fire-that caused me to turn away. It was too soon to be aware of rockets or cannon fire. 

"We're shooting!" I thought. "Why are we shooting?" 

The air filled with hot metal as a geometric pattern of orange flashes opened holes in the heavy deck plating. An explosion tossed our gunners high into the air-spinning, broken, like rag dolls. 

My first impression-my primitive, protective search for something safe and familiar that put me emotionally behind the gun-was wrong. We were not firing at all. We were being pounded with a deadly barrage of aircraft cannon and rocket fire. 

A solid blanket of force threw me against a railing. My arm held me up while the attacker passed overhead, followed by a loud swoosh, then silence. 

O'Connor spotted bright flashes under the wings of the French built jet in time to dive down a ladder. He was struck in midair, severely wounded by rocket fragments before he crashed into the deck below. 

I seemed to be the only one left standing as the jet disappeared astern of us. Around me, scattered about carelessly, men squirmed helplessly, like wounded animals-wide-eyed, terrified, not understanding what had happened. 

The second airplane made a smoky trail in the sky ahead. Unable to move, we watched the jet make a sweeping 180-degree tum toward Liberty, ready to resume the attack. My khaki uniform was bright red now from two dozen rocket fragments buried in my flesh. My left leg, broken above the knee, hung from my hip like a great beanbag. 

The taste of blood was strong in my mouth as I tested my good leg. Was I badly hurt? Could I help the men floundering here? Could I help myself? Was it cowardice to leave here? 

On one leg, I hopped down the steep ladder, lurched across the open area and fell heavily on the pilothouse deck just as hell's own jackhammers pounded our steel plating for the second time. With incredible noise the aircraft rockets poked eight-inch holes in the ship; like fire-breathing creatures, they groped blindly for the men inside. 

Already the pilothouse was littered with helpless and frightened men. Blood flowed, puddled and coagulated everywhere. Men stepped in blood, slipped and fell in it, tracked it about in great crimson footprints. The chemical attack alarm sounded instead of the general alarm. Little matter. Men knew we were under attack and went to their proper places. 

Captain McGonagle suddenly appeared in the starboard door of the pilothouse and ordered: "Right full rudder. All engines ahead flank. Send a message to CNO: 'Under attack by unidentified jet aircraft, require immediate assistance.' " 

Grateful for an order to execute, confident that only this man could save them, the crew responded with speed and precision born of terror. Never have orders been acknowledged and executed more quickly. These were brave men. These were trained men. But these were also confused and frightened men, inexperienced in combat. An order told them that something was being done, made them a part of the effort, gave them something to take the place of the awful fear. 

Reacting to habit as much as to duty, and grateful that duty required his quick exit from this terrible place, Lloyd Painter looked for his relief so that he could report to his assigned damage control station below. Finding Lieutenant O'Connor half dead in a limp and bloody heap at the bottom of a ladder, he demanded: "Are you ready to relieve me?" 

"No, I'm not ready to relieve you," O'Connor mimicked weakly aware, even now, of the irony. McGonagle interrupted to free Lloyd of his bridge duty. 

I lay next to the chart table, unable to control the blood flow from my body and wondering how much I could lose before I would become unconscious. Blood from my chest wound was collecting in a lump in my side so large that I couldn't lower my arm. My trouser leg revealed a steady ft.ow of fresh blood from the fracture site. Numerous smaller wounds oozed slowly. Next to me lay Seaman George Wilson of Chicago, who had stood part of his lookout watch this morning without binoculars. In spite of a nearly severed thumb, Wilson used his good arm and my web belt to fashion a tourniquet for my leg, effectively slowing the worst bleeding. Someone opened my shirt, ripping off my undershirt for use somewhere as an emergency bandage. Meanwhile, I wrapped a handkerchief tightly around Wilson's wrist to control the bleeding from his hand. In this strange embrace we received the next airplane. 

Lieutenant Toth

BLAM! Another barrage of rockets hit the ship. Although the first airplane caused a permanent ringing in my ears and forever robbed me of high-frequency hearing, the attacks seemed no less noisy. Men dropped with each new assault. Lieutenant Toth, still carrying my unsent sighting reports, received a rocket that turned his mortal remains into smoking rubble. Seaman Salvador Payan remained alive with two jagged chunks of metal buried deep within his skull. Ensign David Lucas accepted a rocket fragment in his cerebellum. And still the attacks continued. 

In the pilothouse, Quartermaster Floyd Pollard stretched to swing a heavy steel battle plate over the vulnerable glass porthole. A rocket, and with it the porthole, exploded in front of him to transform his face and upper torso into a bloody mess. Painter helped lead him to relative safety near the quartermaster's log table before leaving the bridge to report to his battle station. 

Lieutenant Commander Armstrong

On the port side, just below the bridge, fire erupted from two ruptured fifty-five-gallon drums of gasoline. A great flaming river inundated the area and poured down ladders to the main deck below. Lieutenant Commander Armstrong-ever impulsive, ever gutsy, ever committed to the job at hand-bounded toward the fire. "Hit 'em! Slug the sons of bitches!" he must have been saying as he fought to reach the quick-release handle that would drop the flaming and still half-full containers into the sea. A lone rocket suddenly dissolved the bones of both of his legs. 

Meanwhile, heretofore mysterious Contact X came to life with the first exploding rocket. Quickly poking a periscope above the surface of the water, American submariners watched wave after wave of jet airplanes attacking Liberty. Strict orders prevented any action that might reveal their presence. They could not help us, and they could not break radio silence to send for help. Frustrated and angry, the commanding officer activated a periscope camera that recorded Liberty's trauma on movie film. He could do no more. 1 

****************

Dr. Kiepfer, en route to his battle station in the ship's sick bay, stopped to treat a sailor he found bleeding badly from shrapnel wounds in a passageway. A nearby door had not yet been closed, and through the door Kiepfer could see two more wounded men on an exposed weather deck. Cannon and rocket fire exploded everywhere as the men tried weakly to crawl to relative safety. 

"Go get those men," Kiepfer yelled to a small group of sailors as he worked to control his patient's bleeding. 

"No, sir," "Not me," "I'm not crazy," the frightened men whimpered as they moved away from the doctor. 

No matter. Kiepfer would do the job himself. As soon as he could leave his patient, Kiepfer moved across the open deck. Ignoring bullets and rocket fragments, the huge doctor knelt  beside the wounded men, wrapped one long arm around each man's waist, and carried both men to safety in one incredible and perilous trip. 

****************

Lieutenant George Golden, Liberty's engineer officer, was in the wardroom with Ensign Lucas when the attack began. A meeting had been planned for Golden, Scott, Lucas and McGonagle to discuss the drill. The captain was still on the bridge, so the meeting would be delayed. Scott was slow to arrive, as today was his twenty-fourth birthday and he was at the ship's store picking out a Polaroid camera to help celebrate the occasion. 

Golden was pouring coffee when they heard the first explosion. "Jesus, they dropped the motor whale boat!" he cried as he abandoned his cup and started toward the boat. Then he heard other explosions and knew even before the alarm sounded that Liberty was under attack. 

Reversing his path, he started toward his battle station in the engine room just in time to see Ensign Scott open the door to his stateroom and slide his new camera across the floor before racing to his battle station in Damage Control Central. 

A rocket penetrated the engine room to tear Golden from the engine-room ladder. He plunged through darkness, finally crashing onto a steel deck, miraculously unhurt. He could see rockets exploding everywhere, passing just over the heads of his men and threatening vital equipment. "Get down!" he yelled. "Everybody stay low; on your knees!" 

Golden knew that the bridge would want maximum power. Already Main Engine Control had an all-engines-ahead-flank bell from the bridge that they could not answer. Flank speed was seventeen knots, but Golden had taken one boiler off the line just ten minutes earlier so that it could cool for repairs. Without that boiler the best speed he could provide was about twelve knots. He immediately put the cooling boiler back on the line and started to bring it up to pressure. 

Even with both boilers on the line, the engines were limited by a governor to eighteen knots. For years Golden had carried the governor key in his pocket so that he could find it quickly in just such an emergency as this. He switched the governor off, permitting the ship to reach twenty-one knots. 

As machine-gun fire and aircraft rockets battered the ship, the main engine room began to take on the appearance of a fireworks display. Most lighting was knocked out in the first few minutes, leaving flashlights and battle lanterns as the only illumination in the room except for a skylight six decks above. In this relative darkness, men worked on hands and knees, operating valves, checking gauges, starting and stopping equipment, bypassing broken pipes; and all the while above them danced white, yellow, red and green firefly like particles. Some were small. Some were huge and burst into pieces to shower down upon them. All entered the room with a tremendous roar as they burst through the ship's outer skin.

Golden glanced at the scene above him. It reminded him of meteor showers, except for the noise, or of electric arc welding. Most of his men were here now, having safely descended the ladders through the fireworks to reach their battle stations. Boiler Tender Gene Owens was here and in charge of auxiliary equipment on the deck below Golden. Machinist Mate Chief Richard J. Brooks was here. Brooks was petty officer in charge of the engine room, and he was everywhere. 

Golden realized suddenly that far above them, directly in the range of rocket and machine-gun fire, was a hot-water storage tank. Five thousand gallons of near-boiling water lay in that tank, ready to pour down upon them if it was ruptured, and it would surely be ruptured. The drain valve was at the base of the tank, so it would be necessary to send a man up more than three decks to open the valve. 

Golden quickly explained to a young sailor what had to be done and sent him on his way, but the frightened man collapsed on the deck grating and refused to move. 

Chief Brooks overheard the exchange. "C'mon, you heard the lieutenant. Move!" he cried, jerking the panic-stricken teen-ager to his feet. 

Terror was written on the young man's face. Tears started to flow as his face contorted in a grimace of fear. 

With a snarl of contempt, Brooks gave him a shove that sent him sprawling. Then Brooks mounted the ladder leading to the vital drain valve. Two decks above, perhaps fifteen feet up the ladder, a tremendous explosion occurred next to Brooks. In a shower of sparks and fire, he was tom from his place on the ladder and thrown into space to land heavily upon the steel grating below. Brooks was back on his feet before anyone could reach him. Back up the same ladder he headed until he found the valve, opened it and drained the water only moments before the inevitable rocket hit the storage tank to find it newly empty. 

In a few minutes, most of the battle lanterns had been struck by rocket fragments or disabled by the impact of nearby explosions. The room was nearly dark. By working on hands and knees, men could remain below the waterline and thus below most of the rocket and gunfire, although they were still vulnerable to an occasional wildly aimed rocket and to the constant shower of hot metal particles from above. 

When fresh-air fans sucked choking smoke from the main deck into the engine rooms, Golden ordered the men to cover their faces with rags and to try to find air near the deck. When the smoke became intolerable, he sent a message to the bridge that he would have to evacuate; but just before Golden was to give the evacuation order, McGonagle ordered a course change that carried the smoke away from the fans. Fresh air returned at last to the engine room.

**************** 

The first airplane had emptied the gun mounts and removed exposed personnel. The second airplane, through extraordinary luck or fantastic marksmanship, disabled nearly every radio antenna on the ship, temporarily preventing our call for help. 

Soon the high-performance Mirage fighter bombers that initiated the attack were joined by smaller swept-wing Dassault Mystere jets, carrying dreaded napalm-jellied gasoline. The Mysteres, slower and more maneuverable than the Mirages, directed rockets and napalm against the bridge and the few remaining topside targets. In a technique probably designed for desert warfare but fiendish against a ship at sea, the Mystere pilots launched rockets from a distance, then dropped huge silvery metallic napalm canisters as they passed overhead. The jellied slop burst into furious flame on impact, coating everything, then surged through the fresh rocket holes to burn frantically among the men inside. 2 

I watched Captain McGonagle standing alone on the starboard wing of the bridge as the whole world suddenly caught fire. The deck below him, stanchions around him, even the. overhead above him burned. The entire superstructure of the ship burst into a wall of flame from the main deck to the open bridge four levels above. All burned with the peculiar fury of warfare while Old Shep, seemingly impervious to man-made flame and looking strangely like Satan himself, stepped calmly through the fire to order: "Fire, fire, starboard side, oh-three level. Sound the fire alarm." 

Firefighters came onstage as though waiting in the wings for a prearranged signal. Streaming through a rear pilothouse door, they carried axes, crowbars, CO2 bottles and hundreds of feet of fire hose. The sound of CO2 bottles and fire-hose sprinklers added to the din as the smell of steam overtook the smell of nitrates, smoke and blood. Men screamed, cried, yelled orders and scrambled to duty as the ship struggled to stay alive. 

Alexander N. Thompson

On the forecastle, Gunner's Mate Alexander N. Thompson fought his way relentlessly toward the forward gun mount. Only moments before, Thompson had remarked to me on the bridge: "No sweat, sir. If anything happens I just want to be in a gun mount." Now he was repeatedly driven away by exploding rockets. Weakened, with duty waiting in that small gun tub, he tried again. 

His radar disabled, Radarman Charles J. Cocnavitch left his post to man a nearby gun mount. "Stay back!" Captain McGonagle ordered, knowing that the gun would be ineffective and that Cocnavitch would die in a futile attempt to fire. Meanwhile, Lieutenant O'Connor, still lying near the ladder where he had fallen, was robbed of any latent prejudices by huge black Signalman Russell David, who braved fire, blast and bullets to move the limp and barely conscious officer from the bridge to safety in the now-empty combat information center.

**************** 

The pilothouse became a hopeless sea of wounded men, swollen fire hoses and discarded equipment. Men tripped over equipment, stepped on wounded. In front of the helmsman a football-size glob of napalm burned angrily, adding to the smoke and confusion. Smaller napalm globs burned in other parts of the room, refusing to be extinguished. 

Again I thought of duty. My duty was on this bridge, amid the flame and the shrapnel, driving this ship and fighting to protect her. Already I was weak from loss of blood and from the shock of my wounds. A sailor tripped over me, stepped on Seaman Wilson, and fell on other wounded as he dragged a CO2 bottle across the room. I decided that duty did not require that we all lie here and bleed. It may even require that we get out of the way, if we can, so that others may fight. Relinquishing Wilson's tourniquet to Wilson, he released mine. Acutely conscious of my retreat from the heart of battle, I raised an arm toward some sailors huddled nearby. Seaman Kenneth Ecker pulled me to my feet and I resumed my one-legged hopping.

I need a place to plug my wounds, I told myself, a place to find the holes and stop the flow of blood. 

I hopped out of the room. Ecker stayed with me, adding to the guilt I felt for leaving the bridge. Bad enough that I should leave, but to take the bridge watch with me! "Go back!" I insisted. Ecker stayed. The ladder leading from the pilothouse was thick with fire hoses. Somewhere beneath the hoses were solid ladder rungs, but my foot could find only slippery fire hoses. With one hand on each railing and with my beanbag catching awkwardly on every obstruction, I hopped clumsily down the ladder. Once I stood aside to let a man pass in the other direction with a CO2 bottle. He stopped to stare at me with a startled look, his mouth open. "Hurry!" I said. I reached the level below to find Ecker still with me. "Go back!" I protested again. 

Lightheaded from loss of blood, I searched for a place to examine my injuries and to treat my wounds. The search became urgent as I became increasingly dizzy. More airplanes pounded our ship as I discovered that the captain's cabin offered no refuge. Through his door I could see a smoke-filled room with gaping holes opening to the flame outside, and frantic napalm globs eating his carpet. 

Around a comer I found the doctor's stateroom. The room was dark, the air free of smoke. His folding bunk was open from a noontime nap, his porthole closed with a steel battle plate. Strangely concerned that I was soiling his sheets with blood, I pulled myself onto his clean bed. My useless left leg hung over the side in a sitting position. Ecker, still nearby, wanting to help but afraid to touch the leg, finally laid it gingerly alongside the other. I thought of the tissue being abused and wondered how close the sharp bone ends were to the artery. 

What happens if I cut the artery? I wondered. Maybe I have already. A thousand questions begged for answers: Did we get our message off? Will they never stop shooting? When will our jets arrive? And who is shooting at us, anyway? 

We still had no idea who was attacking. Although the Arab countries largely blamed the United States for their problems and falsely charged that American carrier-based aircraft had assisted Israel, we knew that the Arab air forces were crippled and probably unable to launch an attack like this one. And to increase the confusion, a ship's officer thought he saw a MIG-15 over Liberty and quickly spread a false report among the crew that we were being attacked by the Soviet Union. Probably no one suspected Israeli forces. 

I took a few still-painful breaths to clear my head before tending my wounds. Ecker hovered nearby, forcing my conscience to remind me that I should be on the bridge; worse, that an able-bodied man was away from his battle station to help me. 

With each movement I could feel the tear of sharp bone end against muscle. I was only abstractly aware of pain; instead, I was conscious of fear, of duty abandoned on the bridge, and of an urgent knowledge that, no matter what else might happen, I would almost surely die if I didn't soon stem the flow of blood, particularly from the leg wound. 

I reached for Dr. Kiepfer's sheets to make a more effective tourniquet when suddenly four deadly rockets opened eight-inch holes to tear through the steel bulkhead into the room. Blast, fire, metal passed over my head and continued through an opposite wall. Ecker, standing in the open doorway, was startled but unhurt; several thumb-size holes at forehead level verified the utility of his battle helmet as he raced away to answer a call for firefighters. 

My bare chest glowed with a hundred tiny fires as burning rocket fragments and napalm-coated particles fell on me like angry wasps. Desperately I brushed them away. As the tiny flames died, the hot metal continued to sear my chest. The room filled with smoke as the carpeting near me and the bedding around me burned with more small fires. 

Through the fresh rocket holes I could see a tremendous fire raging on deck outside and I could hear the crackle of flames. The motor whaleboat burned furiously from a direct napalm hit while other fires engulfed the weather decks and bulkheads nearby. Directly above me on the next deck, I realized, were a gun mount and a radio antenna. Both were obvious targets. I would have to leave this place. 

My leg pinned me to the bunk. It blocked my movement, weighed me down, prevented my escape from the additional rockets that were sure to come. I considered and quickly dismissed sliding under the mattress for protection. With the last of my strength I used my good leg to evict the useless broken limb from the bunk. Would this open the artery? I had to take the chance as the sharp bone ends again sliced through muscle. With great effort I forced myself up, rolled out onto my good right leg, and hopped away once more toward what I hoped would be safer ground, closing the door behind me. 

The door, closed by habit, shielded me from a new blast and probably saved my life as a rocket penetrated the room from above, blasting through the heavy deck plating and air ducts in the overhead to explode with such force that the heavy metal door was torn from its frame. I fell to the deck outside. 

****************

Quartermaster Francis Brown.

On the bridge, the helmsman fell wounded as another assault sent rocket fragments through steel and flesh. Almost before he fell, his post was taken by Quartermaster Francis Brown. The Quartermaster of the watch is the senior enlisted man on duty and is responsible for the performance of the men. Friendly, hard-working, cooperative, Brown was a popular member of the bridge team. I was always pleased when Brown was on duty with me. He never needed to be told what to do. When Brown was on watch, if a helmsman was slow to respond to an order or if a man had trouble with bridge equipment, he spotted and corrected the problem without being told. Now, typically, he saw his duty at the unattended helm. 

The gyro compass no longer worked. It was disabled by three rockets that rode in tandem through the gyro room, passing harmlessly between a group of sailors, smashing the equipment and leaving a three-foot hole in a steel door on the way out. The magnetic compass, meanwhile, spun uselessly, like a child's toy.

**************** 

Fireman David Skolak

Gunner Thompson finally reached Mount 51 to find the gun partially blocked by the body of Fireman David Skolak. Skolak had been assigned to Repair Two, but after Seaman Payan was wounded, leaving the gun unmanned, Skolak left his repair party to take Payan's place. He was quickly dismembered by a direct rocket hit. Very weak now, Thompson forced himself toward Mount 52, some forty feet away on the ship's port side. With luck he would be able to fire at the next attacking jet.

**************** 

Lieutenant Jim Pierce

Long before our arrival in the area, most secret documents had been placed in large weighted bags, ready to be thrown overboard if necessary to keep them from an enemy. This was a precautionary measure, frequently taken by ships operating in dangerous areas. Now, defenseless and under attack, everything classified but not actually in use was to be destroyed. The bags proved useless, as they were too large and heavy to carry, and the water wasn't deep enough for safe disposal, anyway. The ship's incinerator couldn't be used, as it was on the 03 level within easy range of the airplanes. As a last resort, Lieutenant Jim Pierce, the ship's communication officer, ordered his men to destroy everything as best they could by hand. 

Duane Marggraf

Richard Keene

Acrid smoke soon filled the room as he and Joe Lentini dropped code lists, a handful at a time, into a flaming wastepaper basket; nearby, Richard Keene and Duane Marggraf attacked delicate crypto equipment with wire cutters and a sledge hammer. 

In the TRSSCOMM room, equipment finally in full operation, operators had just begun to talk with their counterparts at Cheltenham, Maryland, when rockets suddenly undid all their work to disable the system forever. A shower of sparks cascaded from high-voltage wires overhead, bathing the men and equipment below in melted copper and filling the room with the smell of ozone. Operators at Cheltenham did not learn until much later why Liberty stopped talking in mid-sentence. 

A code-room Teletype operator on Liberty's third deck pounded desperately on a keyboard, trying to send the ship's cry for help. Getting no answer, he tried other equipment until someone finally noticed that a vital coding device had been removed for emergency destruction, disabling the machine. The operator tried again. Still nothing. Vividly aware of the nearness of death, the man was speechless with terror. His voice came in senseless gasps and his body shook; he wet his pants in fear, but he remained at his post and continued to hammer his message into the keyboard. Still no answer. In the rush to reinsert the coding device, the wrong device had been used. "Forget the code," cried Lieutenant Commander Lewis when he saw the problem. "Go out in plain language!" 

Still the message failed to leave the ship. No one knew that all our antennas had been shot down.

**************** 

From where I fell outside the doctor's stateroom I could hear the flames, the loud hiss of CO2 bottles, the rush of water from fire hoses and the sharp crunch as water became steam against hot steel. Smoke was everywhere. 

A young sailor plummeted hysterically down a ladder, crying, "Mr. O'Connor is dead! He's in combat and he's dead!" then disappeared on his grim mission, informing everyone of the death of my roommate and long-time friend. I thought of Jim's wife, Sandy, pregnant; his infant son; their pet schnauzer. Who will tell Sandy? My wife, Terry, will console her, help her. Maybe they'll console each other.

A sailor arrived with a pipe-frame-and-chicken-wire stretcher. Judging my rank from the khaki uniform, Seaman Frank McInturff assured me as he laid the stretcher at my side, "Don't worry, Chief, you'll be all right." Then, startled when he noticed my lieutenant's bars, he apologized grandly for the oversight. We both laughed as I assured him, "That's okay. You can call me Chief." 

I saw no point in moving from where I was. Surely there was no time to treat wounded. If there was time, certainly there were enough men near death to keep the medical staff more than busy. McInturff insisted that the wardroom was in operation as an emergency battle dressing station and that I should go there. He and his partner rolled me onto the stretcher, my leg twisting grotesquely in the process. Then he tied me in place with heavy web belting and hoisted the stretcher. The first obstacle was not far away. The ladder leading down to the 01 deck inclined at a steep angle. I will fall through the straps and down the ladder, I thought. With my stretcher in a near vertical position, we started down. My arms ached as I held the pipe frame to keep from slipping; chicken wire tore my fingers; as I slid deeper toward the foot of the stretcher I could feel the broken bone ends grinding together. Suddenly all such concern was forgotten as another rocket assault battered the ship. The now-familiar, ear-shattering, mind-destroying sound of rockets bursting through steel raced the length of the ship. 

I braced for the plunge down the ladder as holes opened in the steel plating around us. Then, except for the flames, the machinery and the firefighting equipment, silence. 

Following each rocket assault, the silence seemed unearthly; slowly we would become aware of the other sounds, but the immediate sensation was relief and a strange silence. In silence we found ourselves still alive, still standing on our ladder and still breathing deeply. The next ladder was no less steep, but passed easily without the rocket accompaniment. 

We arrived next at the door of the wardroom, our destination, where we were greeted by more rockets, entering the room through an opposite wall. White smoke hung in the air. A fire burned under the empty dinner table. 

"Where should we go?" McInturff asked. Nothing could be seen of the battle dressing station that was supposed to operate here. Clearly, the wardroom could not be used.  

"Just put me down here," I told him. My stretcher was eased to the ground at the open door as the two men returned to the bridge to retrieve more wounded. "Move me away from the door!" I cried as more rocket fragments hurtled through the open door and over my stretcher to spend themselves on the nearby bulkhead. I was quickly moved; the door was closed. The narrow passageway soon filled with wounded, frightened men. A battle dressing station, I learned, had been set up in the chief petty officers' lounge around the comer and was already filled with wounded. Dr. Kiepfer was operating the main battle dressing station in the enlisted mess hall one deck below while this auxiliary station was being operated by a lone senior corpsman, Thomas Lee VanCleave. 

If we can hold out for a few more minutes, I thought, Admiral Martin's jet fighters will be overhead. This hope quickly passed as a sailor knelt at my side to inform me that all our antennas had been shot away. "They put a rocket at the base of every transmitting antenna on the ship," he said, "but there is one that I think I can repair. Do you think I could go out there and try to fix it so we could get our message off" I assured him that he would be doing us all a great service, but asked him to be careful. 

Soon the radio room pieced together enough serviceable equipment to send a message that would alert the Navy to our predicament. An emergency connection patched the one operable transmitter to the hastily repaired antenna. But as Radiomen James Halman and Joseph Ward tried to establish voice contact with Sixth Fleet forces, they found the frequencies blocked by a buzz-saw-like sound that stopped only for the few seconds before each new barrage of rockets struck the ship. Apparently, the attacking jets were jamming our radios, but could not operate the jamming equipment while rockets were airborne. If we were to ask for help, we had to do it during the brief periods that the buzzing sound stopped. Using Liberty's voice radio call sign, Halman cried, "Any station, this is Rockstar. We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance!"3 [If it was an accident as they claim why were they blocking  US Navy communications frequencies? D.C]

Operators in USS Saratoga, an aircraft carrier operating with Vice Admiral Martin's forces near Crete, heard Liberty's call and responded, but could not understand the message because of the jamming. 

"Rockstar, this is Schematic," said the Saratoga operator. "Say again. You are garbled." 

After several transmissions Saratoga acknowledged receipt of the message. The Navy uses a system of authentication codes to verify the identity of stations and to protect against sham messages. 

"Authenticate Whiskey Sierra," demanded Saratoga. 

"Authentication is Oscar Quebec," Halman answered promptly, after consulting a list at his elbow. 

"Roger, Rockstar," said Saratoga at 1209Z. "Authentication is correct. I roger your message. I am standing by for further traffic." 

evil piece of shit

Saratoga relayed Liberty's call for help 4 to Admiral McCain in London for action and, inexplicably, only for information to Vice Admiral Martin and to Rear Admiral Geis (who commanded the Sixth Fleet carrier force). 5 

Several minutes later, having heard nothing from COMSIXTHFLT, the Liberty operator renewed his call for help. 

"Schematic, this is Rockstar. We are still under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance." 

"Roger, Rockstar," said Saratoga. "We are forwarding your message." Then Saratoga added, quite unnecessarily and almost as an afterthought, "Authenticate Oscar Delta." 

The authentication list now lay in ashes a few feet away. Someone had destroyed it along with the unneeded classified material. Frustrated and angry, the operator held the button open on his microphone as he begged, "Listen to the goddamned rockets, you son of a bitch!" 

"Roger, Rockstar, we'll accept that," came the reply. 6

**************** 

Operators in the Sixth Fleet flagship Little Rock and in the carrier America, meanwhile, had long since received Liberty's message. America's Captain Donald Engen 7 was talking with NBC newsman Robert Goralski when the message was brought to the bridge. "This is confidential, Mr. Goralski!" Engen snapped. And Goralski respected the warning. 

Aircraft-carrier sailors know that certain airplanes are always spotted near the catapults where they are kept fueled, armed and ready to fly. They are maintained by special crews, they are flown by carefully selected pilots, and they are kept under special guard at all times. These are the "ready" aircraft. To visitors, they are almost indistinguishable from other aircraft, but they are very special aircraft indeed, and their use is an ominous sign of trouble. They carry nuclear weapons. 

No one in government has acknowledged that ready aircraft were sent toward Liberty, and no messages or logs have been unearthed to prove that nuclear-armed aircraft were launched; moreover, there is no indication that release of nuclear weapons was authorized under any circumstances-only that ready aircraft, which normally carry nuclear weapons, were launched toward Liberty, and that the Pentagon reacted to the launch with anger bordering on hysteria. Widely separated sources have described the launch and subsequent recall of those aircraft in detail, and the circumstances are compelling. 

According to a chief petty officer aboard USS America, the pilots were given their orders over a private intercom system as they sat in their cockpits. A United States ship was under attack, they were told, and they were given the ship's position. Their mission was to protect the ship. Under no circumstances were they to approach the beach. 

Two nuclear-armed F-4 Phantom jets left America's catapults and headed almost straight up, afterburners roaring. Then two more became airborne to rendezvous with the first two, and together the four powerful jets turned toward Liberty, making a noise like thunder. All this activity blended so completely into the shipboard routine that few of the newsmen suspected that anything was awry; those who asked were told that this was a routine training flight. 

****************

"Help is on the way!"8 

This short message was received by a Liberty radioman and quickly passed to nearly every man aboard. Messengers ran through the ship, calling, "They're coming! Help is coming!" Litter carriers and telephone talkers passed the word along. I remembered Philip's warning of the night before: "We probably wouldn't even last long enough for our jets to make the trip."

**************** 

Meanwhile, Navy radio operators at the Naval Communications Station in Morocco worked to establish communications for the emergency. Lieutenant James Rogers and the station commander, Captain Lowel Darby, came immediately to the radio room, where Petty Officer Julian "Tony" Hart quickly set up several circuits, including voice circuits with the aircraft carriers and COMSIXTHFLT, and established a Teletype circuit with CINCUSNA VEUR in London. When the men tuned to the high-command voice network, they could hear USS Liberty, her operators still pleading for help, and in the background the exploding rockets. 

A Flash precedence Teletype message from COMSIXTHFLT coursed quickly through the Morocco communication relay station, destined for the Pentagon, State Department and the White House: 

USS LIBERTY REPORTS UNDER ATTACK BY UNIDENTIFIED JET AIRCRAFT. HAVE LAUNCHED STRIKE AIRCRAFT TO DEFEND SHIP. 

evil piece of shit #2

It seemed only seconds later that a new voice radio circuit was patched into the room that was now becoming a nerve center for Liberty communications. This was a high-command Pentagon circuit manned by a Navy warrant officer, but once contact was established the voice on the circuit changed. Every man in the room recognized the new voice as that of the Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, and he spoke with authority: "Tell Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately," he barked, "and give me a status report." 

evil piece of shit #3

A few minutes later the Chief of Naval Operations himself came on the air. The circuit was patched through to the Sixth Fleet flagship, and Admiral David L. McDonald bellowed: "You get those fucking airplanes back on deck, and you get them back now!" 

"Jesus, he talks just like a sailor," said one of the sailors listening on a monitor speaker at Morocco. 

Soon four frustrated F-4 Phantom fighter pilots returned from what might have been a history-making mission. They might have saved the ship, or they might have initiated the ultimate holocaust; their return, like their departure, blended smoothly into the ship's routine and raised no questions from the reporters who watched. 

Another Flash message moved through the Morocco Teletype relay station: HAVE RECOVERED STRIKE AIRCRAFT. LIBERTY STATUS UNKNOWN. At about the same time, Hart relayed the same message to the Pentagon by voice radio. Liberty was silent now. No one at Morocco knew whether the ship was afloat or not, but they knew that if she still needed help she would have a long wait. 9 

****************

McInturff returned to the bridge to find Lieutenant Commander Philip Armstrong, wounded but coherent and strong, sprawled on the floor of the chart house. His trousers had been removed to reveal grave damage to both legs just below the level of his boxer shorts. Two broken legs kept him off his feet, but he remained in control.

"No more stretchers, Commander," McInturff advised, still winded from his journey with me. "We'll have to take you down in this blanket." 

"No, get a stretcher!" Philip insisted. 

"No more stretchers," McInturff repeated as he laid the blanket next to Philip, ready to roll him onto it. 

"I'm not going anywhere in any goddamned blanket. Go get a stretcher!" 

"But sir, I" 

"Go! I know there are enough stretchers on this ship!" 

"Yes sir." 

Certain that every stretcher had a man in it, usually a man too badly injured to be moved, McInturff raced through the ship, frantically searching for the required stretcher. He opened a door to the main deck, remembering that he had once seen some stretchers stowed near a life-raft rack. A cluster of rockets crashed to deck around him with a deafening roar, showering the area with sparks. Shaken but not slowed, McInturff knew only that he must find that stretcher and get it back to the XO in the chart house. Finally, precious platform in hand, he struggled back toward the sick and impatient executive officer. Up ladders, around corners, tripping over discarded CO2 bottles and the near-solid mass of fire hoses covering the last ladder to the bridge, he arrived again in the pilothouse to find Philip Armstrong waiting not too patiently on the deck of the chart house. Although the battle still raged outside, one-sided as it was, although the ship was still being hammered every few seconds with aircraft rockets, Philip was not involved and he was furious about it. He wanted desperately to be on the bridge. He wanted to fight. If he could do nothing more, he would throw rocks and shake his fist at the pilots as they hurtled past. But Philip was rooted to two beanbags and could only lie there and rage. Someone gave him a cigarette and he turned it into a red cinder almost in one long drag. He asked for another. 

He didn't complain as he was lifted, rudely, painfully, onto the chicken-wire bed. He muttered something as the two sailors lifted the stretcher and started away with him, but McInturff didn't understand as all voices were drowned out by exploding rockets. McInturff dreaded another trip down that treacherous ladder. He was afraid he would slip on the fire hoses, dropping the XO and blocking the ladder. He was exhausted. His heart pounded loudly in his chest, complaining of the exertion until he thought it must rebel; but he had no time to think, certainly not to rest. With Philip and his stretcher nearly on end, Philip's fingers clawing the pipe frame to keep from abusing the fractures, they made the left tum at the bottom of the steep ladder, passed through the narrow door, and found themselves in a passageway next to the captain's open cabin door. 

"Put me down!" Philip ordered. 

"But-" 

"Put me down!" 

"Sir, I-" 

"Get me a life jacket!" Philip demanded loudly. 

"But, sir, they're still shooting and-" 

"Goddamn it, get me a life jacket!" Philip insisted. "I'm not moving from here until I have a life jacket." 

An unusually heavy barrage hit the ship. McInturff pushed the XO's stretcher to relative safety against a bulkhead, and ducked into the burning, smoke-filled captain's cabin. Quickly driven out by the arrival of still more rockets, he heard Philip demand, more firmly: 

"Damn it! I told you to get a life jacket!" 

"Jeezus!There's shit coming in everywhere, Commander!" he pleaded as an explosion tore open a nearby door, but Philip still insisted upon having a life jacket. 

Disbelieving, McInturff obediently left Philip in the care of his partner while he made another desperate trip through the ship, searching wildly for the required life jacket. Finally, he located a discarded jacket in the CPO lounge emergency battle dressing station and forced himself back to where he had left the XO. 

Gone! He was gone. During the insane search for a life jacket, someone had taken the XO below. Certain that his heart would burst, McInturff struggled back up the ladder, back to the carnage in the pilothouse, to retrieve more wounded.

**************** 

Most of the wounded had been removed from the bridge. It was possible once again to walk across the pilothouse. Quartermaster Brown stood at the helm. Captain McGonagle, suffering from shrapnel in his right leg and weakened by loss of blood, remained in firm control of his ship as he directed damage control and firefighting efforts. Ensign David Lucas, the ship's deck division officer, had been "captured" by the captain to serve as his assistant on the bridge. Now Lucas wondered if he would ever see the baby girl born to his wife a few hours after Liberty sailed from Norfolk. He quickly pushed such thoughts from his mind; three motor torpedo boats were sighted approaching the ship at high speed in an attack formation. 

McGonagle dispatched Seaman Apprentice Dale Larkins to take the torpedo boats under fire from the forecastle. Larkins was an apprentice not because he was new to the sea, but because, for reasons of his own, he had refused to take the examination for advancement. He was a large man and a tough fighter. He had already been driven first from Mount 54, then from Mount 53. Now he charged down the ladder and across the open deck to take the boats under fire from Mount 51. 

Captain McGonagle, looking through the smoke of the motor whaleboat fire, saw a flashing light on the center boat. He called for the gunners to hold their fire while he attempted to communicate with the boats using a hand-held Aldis lamp. The tiny signaling device was useless. It could not penetrate the smoke surrounding the bridge. 

Larkins, who had not heard McGonagle's "hold fire" order, suddenly released a wild and ineffective burst of machine-gun fire and was quickly silenced by the captain. Immediately, the gun mount astern of the bridge opened fire, blanketing the center boat. McGonagle called for that gunner, too, to cease fire, but he could not be heard above the roar of the gun and the loud crackle of flaming napalm. Although less than twenty feet apart, McGonagle was separated from the gun by a wall of flame. Lucas ran through the pilothouse and around a catwalk, trying to reach the gun. Finally, when he could see over a skylight and into the gun tub, he found no gunner. The gun mount was burning with napalm, causing the ammunition to cook off by itself. The mount was empty. 

Quartermaster Francis Brown

Heavy machine-gun fire from the boats saturated the bridge. A single hardened steel, armor-piercing bullet penetrated the chart house, skimmed under the Loran receiver, destroyed an office paper punch machine, and passed through an open door into the pilothouse with just enough remaining force to bury half its length in the back of the neck of brave young helmsman Quartermaster Francis Brown, who died instantly. 

Ensign Lucas, seeing Brown fall and not knowing what had hit him or from which direction it had come, stepped up to take his place at the helm. 

A torpedo was spotted. It passed astern, missing the ship by barely seventy-five feet. 

next

TORPEDO ATTACK 

footnotes Chapter 5

1. These aircraft were identified later as French-built Dassault Mirage III fighter bombers. 

2. This airplane was identified later as a French-built twin-engine Nord 2501 Noratlas. The Noratlas is a medium-range transport and does not carry bombs; the belly doors we saw were probably cargo doors.

3. First described in Chapter Three, these are JCS 072230Z and JCS 080110Z June 1967. See Appendix A, pages 226 and 228. 

4. COMSIXTHFLT message 080917Z June 1967. See Appendix A, page 232. 

footnotes Chapter 6

1. This story first came to me from an enlisted crew member of the SUbmarine, who blurted it out impulsively in the cafeteria at Portsmouth Naval Hospital a few weeks after the attack. The report seemed to explain the marks I had seen on the chart in the coordination center, as well as reports of periscope sightings that circulated in the ship on the day of the attack. Since the attack, three persons in positions to know have confirmed the story that a submarine operated near Liberty, although no credible person has confirmed the report that photographs were taken.

2. The jet aircraft that initiated the attack were Dassault Mirage III single-seat long-range l,46Omph (Mach 2.2) fighter bombers similar to those seen during the morning. Mirages carry 30mm cannon in the fuselage and thirty-six rockets under the wings. The follow-up jet attack was conducted by Dassault MD-452 Mystere IV-A single-seat 695mph (Mach 0.91) jet interceptors. Mysteres typically carry two 30mm cannon, fifty-five rockets, and napalm canisters. None of the attacking aircraft was identified as to either type or nationality until much later, when comparison was made with standard warplane photographs.

3. See Appendix B. Liberty appealed for help commencing 1158Z (1358 ship's time) and continuing for more than two hours, remaining silent only when the ship was without electrical power. At 1400Z, two hours after the commencement of the attack, Liberty Radioman Joe Ward transmitted: "Flash, flash, flash. I pass in the blind. We are under attack by aircraft and high-speed surface craft. I say again, Flash, flash, flash. We are under attack by aircraft and high-speed surface craft." At 1405Z (1605 ship's time) Ward came on the air again to say, "Request immediate assistance. Torpedo hit starboard side." These times are important, as Liberty was under fire until 1315Z, was confronted by hostile forces until 1432Z, and was in urgent need of assistance the entire time.

4. Saratoga misidentified the ship as USNS Liberty. USNS ships are civilian-manned and operate under contract with the Navy; USS ships are manned by American sailors and are commissioned by the United States. 

5. Rear Admiral Lawrence Raymond Geis: naval aviator; born 1916; U.S. Naval Academy, class of 1939; promoted to rear admiral July I, 1965; was commanding officer, USS Forresta/ (CV A 59) 1962-63; would be assigned to duty in September 1968 as Chief of Naval Information. The Office of Naval Information has long played a leading role in the cover-up of the USS Liberty story. 

6. Saratoga's repeated demand for authentication, coupled with errors and possible delay in forwarding Liberty's messages, contributed to confusion at CINCUSNAVEUR headquarters. Liberty'S first appeal for help, received by Saratoga at 1209Z, was forwarded at Immediate precedence to CINCUSNA VEUR headquarters. Immediate precedence, however, is entirely inadequate as a speed-of-handling indicator for enemy contact reports; more than 30 percent of the messages glutting the communication system are Immediate precedence or higher. Liberty'S second appeal was appropriately forwarded at the much faster Flash precedence, overtaking the initial report to arrive at CINCUSNAVEUR at 1247Z with the damning notation that it was not authenticated. Thus the first Teletype report of Liberty'S attack arrived in London with the misleading caveat that the transmission could be a hoax. The earlier report, arriving eight minutes later, failed to mention that Liberty's initial transmission was authenticated. Not until 1438Z, as the attack ended and Israel apologized, did CINCUSNAVEUR learn from Saratoga (USS Saratoga message 081358Z June 1967) that the initial report was indeed authenticated. 

7. Captain Donald Davenport Engen: naval aviator; born 1924; first commissioned 1943; University of California at Los Angeles, class of 1948; holds nation's second-highest award for bravery, the Navy Cross. Would be promoted to rear admiral in 1970 and to vice admiral in 1977. 

8. COMSIXTHFLT message OS1305Z June 1967 (Appendix C, page 236) promises: SENDING AIRCRAFT TO COVER YOU. This message, released on the flagship about fifty-five minutes after Liberty's first call for help, was not the first such message. Liberty crewmen, including the writer, recall reports of help on the way at about 1 220Z while the ship was still under air attack. 

9. Months later Hart was visited by an agent of the Naval Investigative Service-armed with notebook and tape recorder-who sought to "debrief' him on the events of June 8; that is, to record for the record everything that Hart could recall of the attack and the communications surrounding it. Hart refused to discuss the attack and the man went away. Hart never heard from him again.