| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2002 2:31 am Post subject: Re: BBC4 documentary 'Dead in the Water' |
| Speaking of not having any idea of what it means to state "unarmed" -- unarmed means exactly "unarmed." Liberty however was armed. End of story. And not only was she armed, Liberty also used the two starboard .50-cal. MGs against the signalling Israeli torpedo boats.
Thus not only was she armed, she fired on the torpedo boats. Perhaps had she not, then the boats might not have assumed they were under attack from an enemy vessel. As her skipper stated --
"As far as the torpedo boats are concerned, I am sure that they felt that they were under fire from USS LIBERTY."
The BBC could have at least made an effort to be accurate, but that wasn't the purpose of the program, now was it. Stating she was "lightly armed", or "inadequately armed" would have been accurate - but not the outright falsehood of "unarmed."
As to the ship not sinking, another and more important fact was that the Israelis called off the attack. Had they not done so, she would have gone down like a rock. To even think that it's believed that the Israelis attacked this ship for some 2 1/2 hours as claimed by some of the more clueless and did not sink her demonstrates how uninformed are a good number of individuals.
| m2jranch@earthlink.net wrote: | To the writer who knocks the documentary, the first statement you make
shows you have no idea at all as to what you are talking about. You state
the "unarmed vessel" is an untruth. Do you call a couple of .50 calibre
machine guns, maybe 6 shotguns, possibly the same number of M16's
and a half dozen .45's ARMED??????? I was not on the USS LIBERTY so I
cannot know her exact armament; however, I WAS on a sister ship and I
KNOW what arms that ship had aboard. We did, on occasion, shoot clay
pigeons off the fan tail just to give the two gunners mates aboard some
practice in cleaning the weapons. LIBERTY, like her 4 sisters and the
'cousins' (PUEBLO and BANNER) had no weapons larger than .50 calibre
machine guns with insufficiently trained personnel to man them for
protection. The fact USS LIBERTY did not sink -- as was the Israeli
intention -- attests the stamina of her personnel and the standard of
production of her builders (since the Liberty and Victory {LIBERTY} hulls
were made in WW II to be expendable). GOD BLESS the American
people! | | |  | | Bored US sailor | | Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2002 3:07 am Post subject: |
| "To the writer who knocks the documentary, the first statement you make
shows you have no idea at all as to what you are talking about."
In the BBC program the narrator states that Liberty was unarmed. This is a completely false statement - either knowingly or unknowingly.
.50 calibre machine guns constitutes *arms.* In fact, the Browning .50 calibre is considered a heavy machine gun - normally crew serviced by two individuals. It is not considered a weapon assigned to an individual and is not so grouped, as suggested by the poster who mentioned M16s, shotguns and .45s.
No idea why the poster would make such comments regarding the question of Liberty being armed or not. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
