......”Pinchas Pinchasy, naval liaison officer at Israeli air force headquarters, reports to Naval Headquarters that the ship cruising slowly off El Arish is “an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy, named Liberty, whose marking was GTR-5.”
...some years ago an account of this tragedy was published and it was revealed that the US had a spy plane flying overhead (the Israelis apparently did not know this...) and they copied all of the Israelis’ transmissions and the Israelis KNEW this was an American ship and deliberatly and intentionally attacked it...yes, they should have been held accountable but never were and they never apologized, if I recall.....
I was fresh out of radar school and assigned to VQ-2 (Navy reconnaissance squadron) in Rota, Spain just a week or two before this happened. In fact, I was doing squadron gate guard duty when the Six Day war broke out. Since I had only been in the squadron for a few weeks I hardly knew anybody so I was ordered to check EVERYBODY’s ID. That got me the stink eye when the CO and XO arrived.
I was also on gate guard duty when the “spy plane” referenced here returned to Rota. To this day, I have a number of very close shipmates (better than friends) who were on the mission.
Lots of memories. Period.