I don’t really have a horse in the issue of the Liberty attack, based on my reading there is some room for reasonable doubt on both sides of the debate. Two things raised here don’t strike me as substantial proof that the attack was deliberate, however. One is the issue of mistaken identification and friendly fire. Friendly fire at sea is a fairly common event, as common as it is on land. On Feb. 22, 1940, the German destroyers Z-1 and Z-3 sank after blundering into a minefield while evading attacks from German He-111 bombers. During the invasion of Sicily, US C-47s were knocked out of the skies by anti-aircraft fire from Allied ships. From here, warning, pdf file.
This site lists 186 KIA and 438 WIA as casualties on US ships from Allied gunfire. Based on my readings, this number is a bit low. For instance the numbers listed for 1942 only list 5 killed and 8 wounded on a destroyer, while it has been pretty well established that the rounds that smashed the bridge of the cruiser Atlanta came from the cruiser San Francisco, which had misidentified the Atlanta as a large Japanese destroyer. While most of the friendly fire from naval gunnery in WWII occurred at night, daylight surface engagements were a rare occurrence due to the advent of airpower.
Mistaken identification of the size or type of ship being attacked was a very common event amongst airmen conducting visual attacks during World War II; the Pacific War is rife with it. It also happened to sailors, one of the reasons that Admiral Kurita broke off and disengaged at the Battle of Samar, a surface action fought in daylight, was the belief that he was fighting much larger ships than the collection of small escort carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts that he actually was engaging.
Attacking the life rafts, if it occurred, also doesn’t strike me as definitive evidence of a deliberate attack. Attacking life rafts and survivors was common practice in the Pacific during World War II between the US and Japan. If the Israelis did attack the survivors, and did believe that they were attacking an Egyptian ship, it is plausible that they though they were attacking Egyptian life rafts and survivors, not American ones.
“Hrankowski is a Fireman Seaman who worked below decks.”
How do you know he was working below decks the whole period? Wouldn’t he come up when word was passed to abandon ship.
“I can only point to the crewmen who, under oath, made no mention of any such action by the IDF”
And how many crewmen is this? You claimed a majority. Even if we accept the naval inquiry as reliable (despite Boston’s statements) this doesn’t get you what you claim: that Enne’s accounts don’t jibe with the recollections of the majority of the crew.
“Then find the full trascript. Its been declassified. With it and the 13 other investigations show no testimony of attacks on the liferafts.”
Source for the fully declassified bit? The “13 reports” is misleading because most of them were limited in scope and didn’t interview crew-members. I have already explained the problem with the naval inquiry. I would be interested in how many crew members were interviewed in that inquiry anyway.
Even the transcript that you provide has Painter as saying:
"At this time, the DC central
passed the word to prepare to abandon ship. We then filed
out to our life rafts which were no longer with us because
they had been strafed and most of them were burned, so we
knocked most of them over the side. "
This contradicts the claim that the rafts were never shot.
As for the rest I won’t get into a full-fledged Liberty debate since it has been done before and there are disputes about many of the details: the length of the air attacks,(25 minutes according to some sources), the types of aircraft and how close they flew before the attacks, the jamming and so on. Let’s stick to the rafts.
“Attacking the life rafts, if it occurred, also doesn’t strike me as definitive evidence of a deliberate attack.”
Regardless of this, isn’t it a war crime? That is what the Proceedings articles says (quoting a Naval Law Review article by a Navy legal expert).
And so much for the original premise of this thread, I guess. All this back and forth over the Liberty is interesting, but what is the relevance to the OP?
OK, my last post on the subject. THis really is off tangent.
Well for one thing, such an order was never given. They were ordered to prepare for abandoning, but that does not mean people from the lower decks come up. It means that certain crewmembers above must take certain actions (such as preparing lifeboats)
Very well, let me qualify for the pendantic:
The rafts were not shot at when they were put in the water. There is no tangible evidence for this.
Rafts being damaged as part of the attack is a lot different from IDF deliberately attacking rafts with men in them (as was the initial claim) or even empty rafts in the water.
“Rafts being damaged as part of the attack is a lot different from IDF deliberately attacking rafts with men in them (as was the initial claim) or even empty rafts in the water.”
Agreed; but you said: “Correction to my post: The rafts were never shot, inflated or not”. It’s not important though.
I do think the statements by various crew members (there are a couple of others on the site which I didn’t link) do constitute evidence of attacks on the rafts after they were put in water but I guess we just have to agree to disagree.
My last post on this tangent as well: Yes, it would constitute a war crime, regardless of who they thought they were shooting at, Egyptians or Americans. I don’t see it as proof of a deliberate attack, though. Shooting at life rafts and helpless survivors is unfortunately a fairly common war crime.
