Assault on the USS LIBERTY: Deliberate Action or Tragic Accident?

Abstract

The USS Liberty was an unarmed electronic intelligence gathering naval vessel patrolling in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula in 1967. It was abruptly attacked by Israel but received no aid from American aircraft in the area. This paper will explore geopolitical conditions at the time, what happened, what the American and Israeli official response was, and bring other facts together from both interviews with surviving crew and memoirs of senior government officials to attempt to develop a complete picture of events related to the USS Liberty. While personal testimony from those directly involved in the incident indicates Tel Aviv may have deliberately targeted the American ship, the question of whether the attack was intentional or the result of a perfect storm of command and control failures on both sides, remains unresolved.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 30, 2007
Accession Number
ADA471304

Entities

People

  • Peyton E. Smith

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accidents
  • Agreements
  • Air Force
  • Boats
  • Governments
  • Motor Torpedo Boats
  • National Security
  • Naval Operations
  • Naval Vessels
  • Navy
  • Radar
  • Reconnaissance
  • Ships
  • Surveillance
  • United States
  • Ussr
  • War Colleges

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • International Relations and Conflict Resolution
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control
  • Microelectronics