The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship (a spy ship), USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. The attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian NSA employee), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. Both the Israeli and United States governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity.
The combined air and sea attack lasted 23 minutes and was carried out by air strafing and napalm bombing by four Mirage III and Super Mystères fighters, and gunfire and torpedo launches from the motor boats, one of which impacted the ship. Israeli forces terminated their attack after the torpedo impact, believing the ship to be sinking. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nautical miles (47.2 km; 29.3 mi) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.
Israel apologized for the attack, saying that USS Liberty had been attacked in error after being mistaken for an Egyptian ship. Others, including survivors of the attack, dispute this account, and state that the attack was deliberate. Thomas Hinman Moorer, the 7th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused President Lyndon B. Johnson of having covered up that the attack was a deliberate act. In 2004, Ward Boston, who served as chief counsel to the Naval Board of Inquiry that investigated the attack, signed an affidavit stating that President Johnson and secretary of defense Robert McNamara had ordered that the assault be ruled an accident and to reach the conclusion "that the attack was a case of 'mistaken identity' despite 'overwhelming evidence to the contrary.'"
In May 1968, the Israeli government paid US$3.32 million (equivalent to US$30.8 million in 2025) to the U.S. government in compensation for the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3.57 million ($31.3 million in 2025) to the men who had been wounded. In December 1980, it agreed to pay $6 million ($23.4 million in 2025) as the final settlement for material damage to the ship plus 13 years of interest.
USS Liberty
USS Liberty was originally the 7,725-long-ton (7,849 t) light civilian cargo vessel Simmons Victory, a mass-produced, standard-design Victory ship, the follow-on series to the famous Liberty ships that supplied the Allies with cargo during World War II. It was acquired by the United States Navy and converted to an auxiliary technical research ship (AGTR), a cover name for National Security Agency (NSA) "spy ships" carrying out signals intelligence missions. It carried out five operations in waters off the west coast of Africa leading up to 1967.
Attack on the Liberty
Events leading to the attack
During the Six-Day War between Israel and several Arab nations, the United States declared its neutrality. Several days before the war began, USS Liberty was ordered to the eastern Mediterranean to gather signals intelligence in international waters near the north coast of Sinai, Egypt.
According to Israeli sources, at the start of the war on 5 June, General Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Air Force (IAF) chief of staff, informed Commander Ernest Carl Castle, the American naval attaché in Tel Aviv, that Israel would defend its coast by every means including sinking unidentified ships. He asked the U.S. to keep its ships away from Israel's coast, or at least inform Israel of their exact positions.
However, American sources said that no such inquiry about ships was made until after the attack on Liberty. Replying to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk after the attack, U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour in Tel Aviv, Israel responded: "No request for info on U.S. ships operating off Sinai was made until after Liberty incident. [ . . . ] Had Israelis made such an inquiry it would have been forwarded immediately to the chief of naval operations and other high naval commands and repeated to dept [Department of State]."
At the outbreak of war, Captain William L. McGonagle of Liberty immediately asked Vice Admiral William I. Martin at the United States Sixth Fleet headquarters to send a destroyer to accompany Liberty and serve as its armed escort and as an auxiliary communications center. The following day, Admiral Martin replied: "Liberty is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation. Request denied." He promised, however, that in the unlikely event of an inadvertent attack, jet fighters from the Sixth Fleet would be overhead in ten minutes.
At the United Nations on 6 June, U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg told the United Nations Security Council that vessels of the Sixth Fleet were several hundred miles from the conflict, in response to Egyptian complaints that the United States was supporting Israel. When this statement was made, it was in fact true; Liberty, now assigned to the Sixth Fleet, was in the central Mediterranean Sea, passing between Libya and Crete, but it would ultimately steam to about 13 nmi (24 km; 15 mi) north of the Sinai Peninsula.
On the night of 7 June Washington time, early morning on 8 June, 01:10 Zulu or 03:10 local time, the Pentagon issued an order to Sixth Fleet headquarters to tell Liberty to come no closer than 100 nmi (190 km; 120 mi) to Israel, Syria, or the Sinai coast (Oren, p. 263). According to the Naval Court of Inquiry and the National Security Agency official history, the order to withdraw was not sent on the radio frequency that Liberty monitored for her orders until 15:25 Zulu, several hours after the attack, due to a long series of administrative and message routing problems. The Navy said a large volume of unrelated high-precedence traffic, including intelligence intercepts related to the conflict, were being handled at the time; and that this combined with a shortage of qualified radiomen contributed to the delayed transmission of the withdrawal message.
Official testimony combined with Liberty's deck log establish that throughout the morning of the attack, 8 June, the ship was overflown, at various times and locations, by IAF aircraft. The primary aircraft type was the Nord Noratlas; there were also two unidentified delta-wing jets at about 09:00 Sinai time (GMT+2). Liberty officer Ennes says that the Noratlas aircraft flew so close to Liberty that noise from its propellers rattled the ship's deck plating. It was later reported, based on information from IDF sources, that the over-flights were coincidental, and that the aircraft were hunting for Egyptian submarines that had been spotted near the coast.
At about 05:45 Sinai time, a ship-sighting report was received at Israeli Central Coastal Command (CCC) in respect of Liberty, identified by an aerial naval observer as "apparently a destroyer, sailing 110 km (70 mi) west of Gaza". The vessel's location was marked on a CCC control table, using a red marker, indicating an unidentified vessel. At about 06:00, the aerial naval observer, Major Uri Meretz, reported that the ship appeared to be a U.S. Navy supply ship; at about 09:00 the red marker was replaced with a green marker to indicate a neutral vessel. About the same time, an Israeli jet fighter pilot reported that a ship 32.2 km (20 mi) north of Arish had fired at his aircraft after he tried to identify the vessel. Israeli naval command dispatched two destroyers to investigate, but they were returned to their previous positions at 09:40 after doubts emerged during the pilot's debriefing. After the naval observer's Noratlas landed and he was debriefed, the ship he saw was further identified as USS Liberty, based on its "GTR-5" hull markings. USS Liberty's marker was removed from CCC's Control Table at 11:00, due to its positional information being considered out of date.
At 11:24, the Israeli chief of naval operations received a report that Arish was being shelled from the sea. An inquiry into the source of the report was ordered to determine its validity. The report came from an air support officer in Arish. Additionally, at 11:27 the Israeli Supreme Command head of operations received a report stating that a ship had been shelling Arish, but the shells had fallen short. (The investigative journalist James Bamford points out that Liberty had only four .50 caliber machine guns mounted on her decks and thus could not have shelled the coast.) The Head of Operations ordered that the report be verified, and that it be determined whether or not Israeli Navy vessels were off the coast of Arish. At 11:45, another report arrived at Supreme Command saying two ships were approaching the Arish coast.
The shelling and ship reports were passed from Supreme Command to Fleet Operations control center. The chief of naval operations took them seriously, and at 12:05 torpedo boat Division 914 was ordered to patrol in the direction of Arish. Division 914, codenamed "Pagoda", was under the command of Commander Moshe Oren. It consisted of three torpedo boats numbered: T-203, T-204 and T-206. At 12:15, Division 914 received orders to patrol a position 32 km (20 mi) north of Arish. As Commander Oren headed toward Arish, he was informed by Naval Operations of the reported shelling of Arish and told that IAF aircraft would be dispatched to the area after the target had been detected. Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin was concerned that the supposed Egyptian shelling was the prelude to an amphibious landing that could outflank Israeli forces. Rabin reiterated the standing order to sink any unidentified ships in the area, but advised caution, as Soviet vessels were reportedly operating nearby. At 13:41, the torpedo boats detected an unknown vessel 20 miles northwest of Arish and 14 miles (23 km) off the coast of Bardawil. The ship's speed was estimated on their radars. The combat information center officer on T-204, Ensign Aharon Yifrah, reported to Oren that the target had been detected at a range of 22 miles (35 km), that her speed had been tracked for a few minutes, after which he had determined that the target was moving westward at a speed of 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph). These data were forwarded to the Fleet Operations control center.
The speed of the target was significant because it indicated that the target was a combat vessel. Moreover, Israeli forces had standing orders to fire on any unknown vessels sailing in the area at over 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph), a speed which, at the time, could be attained only by warships. The chief of naval operations asked the torpedo boats to double-check their calculations. Yifrah twice recalculated and confirmed his assessment. A few minutes later, Commander Oren reported that the target, now 17 miles (27 km) from his position, was moving at a speed of 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph) on a different heading. Bamford, however, points out that Liberty's top speed was far below 28 knots. His sources say that at the time of the attack Liberty was following her signal-intercept mission course along the northern Sinai coast, at about 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph) speed.
The data on the ship's speed, together with its direction, gave the impression that it was an Egyptian destroyer fleeing toward port after shelling Arish. The torpedo boats gave chase, but did not expect to overtake their target before it reached Egypt. Commander Oren requested that the Israeli Air Force dispatch aircraft to intercept. At 13:48, the chief of naval operations requested dispatch of fighter aircraft to the ship's location.
The IAF dispatched a flight of two Mirage III fighter jets codenamed Kursa flight which arrived at Liberty at about 14:00. The formation leader, Captain Iftach Spector, attempted to identify the ship. He radioed to one of the torpedo boats his observation that the ship looked like a military ship with one smokestack and one mast. He also communicated, in effect, that the ship appeared to him like a destroyer or another type of small ship. In a post-attack statement, the pilots said they saw no distinguishable markings or flag on the ship.
At this point, a recorded exchange took place between a command headquarters weapons systems officer, one of the air controllers, and the chief air controller questioning a possible American presence. Immediately after the exchange, at 13:57, the chief air controller, Lieutenant-Colonel Shmuel Kislev, cleared the Mirages to attack.
Air and sea attacks
After being cleared to attack, the Mirages dove on the ship and attacked with 30-mm cannons and rockets. The attack came a few minutes after the crew completed a chemical attack drill, with Captain McGonagle on the command bridge. The crew was in "stand-down mode", with their helmets and life jackets removed. Battle readiness "modified condition three" was set, which meant that the ship's four .50 caliber machine guns were manned and ammunition was ready for loading and firing. Eight crewmen either were killed immediately or received fatal injuries and died later, and 75 were wounded. Among the wounded was McGonagle, who was hit in the right thigh and arm. During the attack, antennas were severed, gas drums caught fire, and the ship's flag was knocked down. McGonagle sent an urgent request for help to the Sixth Fleet, "Under attack by unidentified jet aircraft, require immediate assistance".