Sorry for the delay in replying to your post. I apologize for not being fully cognizent about the Liberty's attack. Supposedly the Israeli pilots thought it was an Egyptian ship? That seems evident from the transcript. Maybe they were trigger happy. Spector(sp.?) the pilot who's gone out of the way to defend his actions in an insulting manner -- usually people do that when they don't have a leg to stand on, which he doesn't, of course. This entire incident smells to high heaven. I think about Jonathon Pollard's treachery, Israel's selling of some of our tech. military stuff to China --- then I think about our bombing of the Chinese embassy, which I hope to God we did on purpose. Complicated business, real politik.
I did not fire on the Liberty as a human target. I was sent to attack a sailing vessel. This ship was on an escape route from the El Arish area, which at that same moment had heavy smoke rising from it,
I can't identify it but in any case it's a military ship."
I circled it twice and it did not fire on me. My assumption was that it was likely to open fire at me and nevertheless I slowed down and I looked and there was positively no flag. Just to make sure I photographed it
I was told on the radio that it was an Egyptian ship off the Gaza coast. Hit it. The luck of the ship was that I was armed only with light ammunition [30mm] against aircraft. If I had had a bomb it would be sitting on the bottom today like the Titanic. I promise you
Every order is given by commanders and the last one to receive it has to decide whether he will pull the trigger or not. In this instance I was the fighter. I checked what I had to check [i.e. that it was a military ship and not one of ours] and pulled the trigger