I know what they were. It doesn’t alter my point. I think the problem is that the discussion is being conducted by people with no knowledge of boats and ships, and being on the water.
My old 12 foot dinghy and my current 15 foot runabout are small boats. A 70 foot boat is a big boat.
There was a 7 knot wind blowing when Liberty was attacked.
That’s Beaufort 2 to 3, with waves between 1 to 2 feet. My 15’ half tonne boat handles that easily, but can move around a fair bit, depending on angle to waves. A 70’ 60 tonne boat will be pretty stable in it.
Beaufort number 2 - Light Breeze
Wind speeds: 4-6 knots (4-7 mph; 6-11 kph; 1.6-3.3 mps)
At sea: Small wavelets, still short but more pronounced; crests have a glassy appearance and do not break
Sea disturbance number: 1
Probable wave height: 10-15 cm (4-6 in); (0-1 ft; 0-0.3 m)
On land: Wind felt on face; leaves rustle; ordinary vane moved by wind
Notes: Wind fills sails of yacht, which then may move at 1-2 knots
Beaufort number 3 - Gentle Breeze
Wind speeds: 7-10 knots (8-12 mph; 12-19 kph; 3.4-5.4 mps)
At sea: Large wavelets; crests begin to break; foam of glassy appearance; perhaps scattered white horses
Sea disturbance number: 2
Probable wave height: 60 cm (2 ft); (1-2 ft; 0.3-0.6 m)
On land: Leaves and small twigs in constant motion; wind extends light flag
Notes: Yachts start to careen and travel at 3-4 knots
Caveat The 24 kts figure is calculated from the Israeli statement that they misidentified the Liberty because they calculated from it’s movement relative to them that it was doing 30 kts. If they are lying about their reasons for attacking the Liberty …. .
Anything based on the Liberty’s alleged speed of 30kts demonstrates nothing but a ridiculous argument, except for the Israeli claim which is a patent lie.
The Liberty had a top speed of 18 kts. The Egyptan transport El Kasir, which the torpedo boats claimed to have identified, had a top speed of 14 knots. Any sailor with more than five minutes experience would look at either of those ships and know its top speed was under 20 kts, and no more than 15 for the El Kasir. 30 kts is destroyer speed. This is regardless of the fact that the Israelis had accurately identified the USS Liberty hours earlier and were tracking it to the point of attack.
There’s also the problem that the Liberty was doing only 5 kts.
http://www.ussliberty.org/salans.htm
The gross speed discrepancy doesn’t point to Israeli incompetence, because any sailor can tell the difference between 5 kts and even, say, 15 kts, let alone 30 kts. At 30 kts there’ll be a real big bow wave and wake, and ships of that generation will really heel over on turns. At 5kts you don’t get any of this. It’ll also be quite visible from the air.
The Israeli claim is a patent, and extraordinarily clumsy, lie. Anybody who bases any argument on this lie is, wittingly or unwittingly, putting forward nonsense.
Were you moving at the time, or stationary?
Stationary. I was responding to your point that it’s supposedly hard for a prone machine gunner to hit a man sized target at more than 100 metres.
Sustained fire with automatic weapons isn’t rocket science if you’re using tracer and or can see fall of shot. Apart from controlling recoil and stopping climbing with hand held weapons, (the first of which isn’t and the second of which isn’t much of an issue for mounted weapons), it’s about as instinctive as using a trigger nozzle on a garden hose to put the water where you want it.
it is possible that the seas were calm enough for accurate shooting
The sea was plenty calm enough for very accurate shooting with any man controlled (i.e not gun turret etc) weapon. Bear in mind that boats and ships can fire accurately in heavy weather. That’s what they’re trained to do.
It comes down to Occam’s razor here. The options are that either the Israelis were jamming every frequency that the Liberty tried yet somehow wasn’t noticed by any other US shipping in the region, or her antennae had suffered battle damage and were inoperable. Given that IIRC there are accounts from the crew of repairing battle damage to the radio systems after the attack, I would tend to suspect the latter as the more plausible.
Isn’t radio range a function of transmitter power? Couldn’t the Israelis jam locally?
Quite possible. I would refer you again to the incident on Telic 1 where L/CoH Matty Hull was killed and Tpr Chris Finney got the GC when they were attacked by A-10s. The video is out there and clearly shows allegedly highly trained US ground attack pilots talking themselves into believing that the flourescent orange recognition panels on their Scimitar armoured recce vehicles were in fact “orange rockets”. If current day US pilots can screw up that badly, why should Israeli pilots from the 1960s be any better?
Did the US incident involve a target which had been accurately identified by the attacker’s force and tracked for hours beforehand, with co-ordinated attacks in international waters by two separate forces, i.e. air force and navy, under separate commands?
I accept that mistakes happen all the time in war. I don’t accept that the USS Liberty was one of them, because all the evidence points to a deliberate and sustained attack.
