Remembering CT2 Jerry Lee Goss, KIA USS LIBERTY

The Liberty was reconnoitered by several unidentified aircraft during the morning hours of 8 June. That afternoon it was about twenty-five nautical miles north of the Egyptian city of AI Arish when, at about 1400 local, two French-built Israeli Dassault fighters veered toward the ship and began strafing it with cannon and rockets. The attack put some 821 rounds into the hull and superstructure ... 3 Israeli torpedo boats launched 2 torpedoes at about 1430. The torpedoes tore through the SIGINT spaces, killing 25 men and putting a hole in the hull 39 feet across. As the crew of the Liberty scrambled to keep the vessel afloat, one more crewmember was killed by machinegun fire from 1 of the torpedo boats ... Sixth Fleet escorts reached the Liberty sixteen hours after the attack and trailed the vessel, picking up classified and cryptographic keying material escaping from the hole in the hull. The Liberty limped into Malta on 14 June after a heroic struggle to stay afloat that eventually earned McGonagle the Medal of Honor.

If it was an accident, how could the Israelis have possibly misidentified the ship? The Liberty, was flying an American flag, was clearly marked on the hull with "AGTR-5," and when the first flag was shot down by the attacking fighters, McGonagle hoisted the largest flag he had aboard, a holiday ensign seven by thirteen feet. This enormous flag was flying above the Liberty when the torpedo boats made contact and executed their attack.

The Liberty was decommissioned a year after the attack, and in 1973 the hulk was cut up for scrap in Baltimore's Curtis Bay Shipyard.