CHAPTER 3

While we are not responsible for the safety of the vessel, we cannot absolve ourselves totally from the considerations of safety.

—SECRET NSA MEMO

Shortly before 4 A.M. on Thursday, June 8, Ensign John Scott assumed deck watch on the Liberty’s bridge. Located in front of the smokestack, and rising several stories above the main deck, the bridge on the twenty-two-year-old ship was austere. A radarscope, plotting board, and writing desk lined the forward bulkhead, beneath five portholes that offered a view of the ship’s bow and the sea ahead. The navigator’s chart table sat against the portside bulkhead; directly opposite it on the starboard side was the quartermaster’s desk. There sailors kept a running log of the ship’s course, speed, and sightings of other vessels in a notebook that ultimately became the ship’s log. In the center of the bridge stood the Liberty’s gyrocompass, engine order telegraph, and the helm. Two doors on either side led out to wings—each with signal lights and a compass—that provided an unobstructed view of the bow and stern. In a throwback to the Liberty’s World War II origins, the bridge and starboard wing offered voice tubes that allowed the deck officer to shout orders through a network of pipes to the engine room.

An uneasy quiet settled over the bridge this morning as Scott scanned the dark horizon with binoculars. The spy ship, after days of steaming east at seventeen knots, had slowed to ten knots as it neared the Egyptian coast. A helmsman, quartermaster, and a couple of lookouts joined Scott on the bridge. Most of the other officers slept below in nearly a dozen staterooms. The chief petty officers bunked in a single compartment and the rest of the crew shared three cavernous berths, the largest able to sleep 135 men in bunks stacked three high. The Liberty required only a few sailors to run the engineering plant, guide the ship, and stand watch. Far below deck in the National Security Agency’s hub, work continued at a frenetic pace despite the early hour. Behind locked doors, communications technicians eavesdropped on radio communications, intercepted Morse code messages, and sniffed out radar systems.

Scott normally found the morning watch a miserable assignment. To stay awake, the young officer downed cups of black coffee and counted rivets on the deck plates. If he was lucky, the Liberty might sail through a patch of phosphorescent algae that sparkled in the dark seas and occasionally illuminated porpoises that liked to swim in the ship’s bow wake. A couple of times, he had even spotted whales. The most exciting event Scott had witnessed on watch happened on an earlier cruise in Africa. The radarman that night had reported fuzzy blips as the ship trolled the coastline, but a scan of the dark waters revealed nothing. A small fleet of fishermen in dugout canoes suddenly appeared in front of the Liberty. The fishermen lit torches to signal the spy ship, but it was too late. Scott could do little more than shout apologies as the lumbering Liberty sliced through their fishing lines.

On this morning—Scott’s twenty-fourth birthday—the eastern Mediterranean was empty. A stream of merchant ships exiting the war zone had passed the Liberty in recent days, but that traffic had ended. The deck log shows that the Liberty’s last encounter with another ship had come at 2:30 P.M. the day before, when it sailed within fifteen hundred yards of the Greek merchant vessel Ioannis Aspiotis. The Liberty’s teletype had churned out daily updates on Israel’s stunning success in the war. In three days, the Jewish state had obliterated Egypt’s forces, seized much of the Sinai Peninsula, and reached the banks of the Suez Canal. On the Jordanian front, Israel had captured much of the West Bank, including the Old City of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jericho. “All this the armed forces of Israel did alone,” declared Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s chief of staff, in comments widely distributed by the wire services. “Everyone fought like lions.”

Though the Liberty sailed in international waters, the crew remained on edge. The proximity to the war zone magnified the sense of loneliness and isolation. The rest of the Sixth Fleet, with its aircraft carriers and destroyers, assembled approximately five hundred miles west off the southern coast of Crete. The potential danger prompted McGonagle to occasionally summon intelligence officers to the bridge to provide updates. The night before, as the Liberty skirted the Egyptian coast, the men had watched the Israelis bomb the Suez Canal. The fire and smoke had clouded the night sky. Scott scanned the horizon this morning in silence. It all felt so eerie. A war raged on shore yet on the bridge the normal sense of routine permeated. In a few moments, the cooks would arrive with the first batch of warm biscuits. Scott felt like Marlow headed up the river in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

The early morning light illuminated the empty horizon as Scott glanced up at the mast at about 5 A.M., where he spotted the American flag fluttering in the breeze. Fifteen minutes later, a lone plane zipped high overhead. Scott trained his binoculars on the plane. It flew high, too high to discern any markings, but he noted that the plane had a double fuselage and twin engines. The flying boxcar, as it was commonly known, lazily circled the Liberty several times.

High above the Liberty in the cockpit of the Nord 2501 Noratlas reconnaissance plane, an Israeli observer stared down at the spy ship. The plane had been airborne since 4:10 A.M., patrolling Israel’s coastline to detect ships beyond radar range. Other than the Liberty, the sea was largely empty. The recon plane dropped as low as three thousand feet and circled a half mile away to better study the foreign vessel. The observer radioed that he had found what looked like a destroyer seventy miles west of Gaza. The observer soon corrected his earlier report. He had spotted an American supply ship. From the cockpit, the observer noted the Liberty’s unique hull markings, GTR-5, which identified it as a general technical research ship. The flight engineer later recalled that the ship lacked cannons. “It was a gray color,” he said. “Not too big, not too small, like a cargo ship.”

Back on the Liberty’s bridge far below, Scott watched the unidentified plane circle in the clear skies. It was obvious from the plane’s maneuvering—and sudden interest in the Liberty—that it was on a reconnaissance mission. Scott snapped four pictures with a 35-mm camera. He then watched as the plane banked and soon departed. Seaman Apprentice Dale Larkins, who was on watch with Scott, later sketched the plane in his journal. “It made 3 runs fore and 2 aft in a figure eight pattern,” Larkins wrote. “It then crossed from port to starboard in front of the ship and flew over the horizon.” Using the gyrocompass on the wing of the bridge, Scott shot a direction bearing. The officer consulted a map and noted the plane headed toward Tel Aviv. There was no doubt in Scott’s mind that the plane was Israeli. The phone on the bridge rang moments later. One of the chief petty officers in the NSA research spaces below asked Scott if he had spotted any aircraft. The spooks must have detected the plane’s communications, Scott thought.

“You’re clairvoyant,” Scott replied. “I just did.”

“Did you happen to notice which way it went?” the chief petty officer asked.

“It flew over us, circled, and headed back towards Tel Aviv.”

The Liberty had been detected.

 

Commander McGonagle risked nothing. Since the outbreak of the war several days earlier—and even as the Liberty remained approximately nine hundred miles from the Middle East—the rigid skipper ramped up the ship’s alert level to Modified Condition of Readiness Three. The Navy jargon mandated that sailors retrieve boxes of ammunition from the ship’s magazine and store them alongside the four machine guns. McGonagle demanded that sailors remove the gun covers unless heavy sea spray threatened to soak them. For safety reasons he ordered that the weapons remain unloaded. He stationed two sailors at the forward machine guns at all times and instructed lookouts to remain ready to man the guns aft of the bridge.

The skipper also ordered that the ship immediately sound the general quarters alarm if any unidentified aircraft appeared to approach the ship on a strafing, bombing, or torpedo run. Likewise, he declared that any boat racing toward the Liberty at twenty-five knots or faster should be considered hostile and should prompt a ringing of the general quarters alarm. “Maximum effort must be made to minimize personnel/material damage, safeguard the watertight integrity of the ship, and continue performance of primary mission,” McGonagle wrote in a memo to his officers Monday. “It is better to set general quarters in doubtful cases than to be taken by surprise and be unable to fight.”

A former gunnery officer during the Korean War, McGonagle recognized that even with the heightened alert, the spy ship remained virtually defenseless. The four Browning .50-caliber machine guns—capable of firing up to five hundred rounds a minute with an effective range of only about one mile—would prove worthless against fighter jets or agile torpedo boats. The gunner had to manually track targets with an open sight while another sailor loaded rounds. Even the ship’s four-page gunnery doctrine declared the mounted guns’ “primary function” was to repel boarders, not shoot down fighters. On the rare occasion that gunners had to target a plane, the ship’s doctrine stated that estimating the altitude would come down to “guess work.” Two days earlier, the edgy skipper had cabled a gentle reminder of the Liberty’s meager arsenal to his superiors. “Self defense capability limited to four .50 caliber machine guns and small arms.”

McGonagle initiated a relentless drill schedule to prepare the crew. In the last three days, he had drilled his men almost daily for a surprise attack. The deck log shows he ordered a steering casualty drill at 10:59 A.M. Monday to test the officers’ ability to guide the ship in case the Liberty lost rudder power. He followed that up with a general quarters drill at 1:02 P.M. to simulate an attack. Sailors raced to battle stations, dogged down hatches to create watertight compartments, and unrolled fire hoses. McGonagle ordered another general quarters drill Wednesday at 1:01 P.M. With the Liberty steaming so close to a war zone, the officers and crew expected more drills today. “With all the excitement, the Captain hasn’t chewed my ass for anything in about a week,” one of the officers wrote in a letter. “He’s too busy with other matters.”

Reveille sounded soon after daybreak, and hungry sailors streamed into the mess deck, chief petty officers’ lounge, and the officers’ wardroom. Executive Officer Lieutenant Commander Philip Armstrong, Jr., mustered the crew at approximately 7:45 A.M. as he did most mornings. Before him on the main deck, sailors lined up by department as the ship’s officers reviewed morning reports. The Plan of the Day reflected the Liberty’s proximity to the conflict. Posted throughout the ship, the two-page memo advised sailors on how to respond to a chemical attack—slip on gas masks and report to decontamination stations—and how to distinguish between nerve, blister, and blood agents. If infected with deadly nerve gas, sailors were instructed to immediately inject themselves with atropine.

The corpsmen began sick call at approximately 8 A.M. in the Liberty’s six-bed infirmary, a routine that involved checking sore throats and earaches, and administering the occasional shot of penicillin to clear up a case of gonorrhea picked up in the last port. Days of heavy seas had coated much of the bow with salt spray. Crews prepared to scrape rust from the decks and paint. Down in the engine room, a check revealed the Liberty still had more than 650,000 gallons of fuel oil, burning an average of 360 gallons an hour. A faulty steam-line gasket troubled the engineering officer, a problem that would require the Liberty to operate off a single boiler while crews replaced the gasket. Research operators who scanned frequencies in the NSA’s hub now found Hebrew dominated the airwaves as the Israelis controlled the skies.

The deck log shows that the Liberty crossed the hundred-fathom curve—the edge of the continental shelf—at 8:08 A.M. as it steamed toward its operating area twelve and a half miles off Egypt. Forty-one minutes later, the spy ship turned and sailed a southwesterly course parallel to the Egyptian coast. The Liberty slowed to five knots at 9:05 A.M., a speed that allowed the operators to zero in on communications. Twenty-five minutes later, bridge officers spotted a minaret rising above El Arish twenty miles away on the Sinai Peninsula. Navigators used the conspicuous landmark that towered above the date palms of the dusty Bedouin town to identify the Liberty’s precise location. In the empty desert, no other distinguishable features registered on the radar.

Thursday morning shaped up beautifully. The sun climbed high in the cloudless sky and a warm breeze blew across the decks. The Liberty’s weather log recorded calm seas, a seventy-four-degree water temperature, and visibility of at least ten miles, though officers on the bridge could see farther. Crewmembers occasionally lined the rails to catch a glimpse of Egypt. The desert dunes peppered by palm groves seemed to roll right into the sea. Sailors wrestling with cabin fever after days of gray weather stretched out during break on beach chairs and towels to sunbathe. Many smoked cigarettes and swapped stories of girlfriends while wondering what Mediterranean ports the Liberty might visit.

Reconnaissance flights now regularly buzzed the Liberty. A single jet aircraft passed astern then circled the spy ship at 8:50 A.M. Two more jets returned at 10:30 A.M. and orbited the ship three times. Twenty-six minutes later a single aircraft at a high altitude again circled the Liberty. Crewmembers noted other reconnaissance flights at 11:26 A.M., 11:50 A.M., 12:20 P.M., and 12:45 P.M. Many of the men on deck believed that the planes, which at times buzzed the Liberty at low altitude, snapped photos of the spy ship. Beyond the reconnaissance flights, officers observed a propeller-driven patrol plane inspecting the El Arish coastline at an altitude of five hundred feet. The recon flights zoomed by with such regularity that when a plane failed to materialize as expected promptly at lunchtime, one of the radar men commented: “Where’s our buddy?”

McGonagle remained on edge. Only a dozen miles separated the spy ship from the war zone. Soon after the Liberty turned to parallel the Egyptian coast, the skipper left the bridge and headed down to the NSA’s research spaces. He passed through the cipher-lock door and arrived at the office of Dave Lewis, the Liberty’s senior intelligence officer. The thirty-six-year-old Lewis had spent the morning directing his men. With the Liberty now in earshot of the war, operators hustled to soak up communications to later beam back to the NSA. McGonagle closed the door behind him. “Would it affect your mission if we moved farther offshore?” he asked.

Lewis recognized that one of the Liberty’s functions was to pick up ultrahigh-and very-high-frequency radio communications, commonly used by battlefield commanders. Those communications worked best when the sender and receiver were within each other’s line of sight, typically no more than twenty miles apart. If the Liberty sailed over the horizon, Lewis knew the curvature of the earth would diminish some of those capabilities. Many of the Liberty’s other functions, such as intercepting Morse code transmissions, would not be affected. Lewis leveled with the captain. “Yes,” he answered. “We’d lose some line of sight.”

The skipper considered his options. The Liberty had sailed more than five thousand miles in the past two weeks for the sole purpose of eavesdropping on the war. At the same time, McGonagle had to ensure the safety of nearly three hundred crewmembers. The skipper had no way of knowing that the day before, the chief of naval operations had frantically dashed off a memo to pull the ship farther from shore. That message ordering the Liberty to remain at least one hundred miles from the coast had yet to roll off the ship’s teletype. As far as McGonagle knew, he was right where the Navy wanted him—within eyesight of the war.

The skipper also had no way of knowing that the Israeli reconnaissance plane that buzzed the ship at 5:15 A.M. had landed. The naval observer aboard that plane had reported the Liberty’s distinct hull markings during debriefing. An Israeli officer looked up the ship’s identity and forwarded his findings to his navy’s war room and naval intelligence. Israel knew not only that an American ship trolled off the coast of the Sinai Peninsula, but that it was the spy ship Liberty.

“Well, if it affects your mission,” McGonagle told Lewis, “we won’t move offshore.”

 

McGonagle joined his officers on the forward deck during lunch to sunbathe. The forty-one-year-old skipper maintained a running competition with his men for the best tan, often bragging that no one could ever beat him. McGonagle slipped back into his khaki uniform and strode onto the bridge at 1:05 P.M. The Liberty had changed course at 11:32 A.M. and now steamed northwest at five knots, paralleling the Egyptian coast. The ship’s weather log shows that the morning’s clear skies, calm seas, and excellent visibility carried over into the afternoon. Reconnaissance flights continued to buzz the spy ship about every half hour. The sense of danger loomed, prompting the spooks to torch the previous month’s key cards required to operate the crypto equipment. The Liberty advised that it now planned to destroy all excess materials daily given the “current situation and shallow water operating area.”

The week’s rigorous drill schedule prompted crewmembers to speculate that the skipper planned another that afternoon. Soon after lunch, many sailors gravitated toward battle stations in anticipation. McGonagle didn’t disappoint. The skipper ordered a chemical warfare drill at 1:10 P.M. The public address system broadcast the now familiar order: “General quarters! General quarters! All hands man your battle stations.” Sailors hustled to set up chemical decontamination centers in the ship’s showers and practiced on the Liberty’s gunners and topside crew. Damage control teams sealed hatches to compartmentalize the ship and create watertight integrity. Firefighters unrolled hoses and broke out stretchers as medical corpsmen manned casualty collection centers. The gunners, once successfully processed through the mock decontamination center, raced to the Liberty’s four .50-caliber machine guns.

McGonagle monitored the drill from the bridge. His earlier concern over the Liberty’s proximity to the war zone returned. At the start of the drill, the skipper spotted a cloud of black smoke on the beach approximately fifteen to twenty miles west of El Arish and thirteen miles from the Liberty. Twenty minutes into the drill, the skipper noted another dark cloud about five to six miles east of El Arish. McGonagle estimated that the second cloud, which appeared smaller, was about twenty-five miles from the Liberty. The quartermaster recorded both in the ship’s log. Thirty-eight minutes after the general quarters drill began, the skipper ended it. The crew’s overall performance pleased him. Sailors successfully manned battle stations in three minutes, though the skipper was unhappy that it took nearly five minutes for the ship to set condition zebra, the highest state of battle readiness. With his slow drawl, he addressed his crew over the loudspeaker, singling out the column of black smoke onshore as a reminder of the Liberty’s perilous location.

The skipper’s warning hung over the crew as the men returned to duty. Dale Larkins paused for a cigarette break at the filter maintenance shop before he resumed work on a high line used to transfer people between ships. The twenty-one-year-old Nebraskan, whose half-brother had been killed in the Korean War, remained ticked off as he snubbed out his cigarette. The deck department had to pull extra duty that night as punishment for someone scribbling on the partitions between bathroom stalls. Bryce Lockwood stood at his bunk in a rear berthing compartment, clutching several white T-shirts he had just picked up at the Liberty’s store. In his haste to pack his sea bag a week earlier, Lockwood had neglected to grab enough undershirts. Armed with an inkpad and Marine-issued rubber stamp, he pressed his name in the collars. Petty Officer 2nd Class Dennis Eikleberry, a twenty-year-old communications technician from Ohio, climbed the ladder to the Liberty’s fantail. After an all-night shift monitoring the war, he stared at the golden beaches nearby.

Ensign Scott, still tired from his morning watch, drifted into the wardroom in search of a cup of black coffee. The six-foot-four officer from North Carolina lugged his Polaroid Model 210 color camera, hoping to snap a few pictures that afternoon of the Egyptian coast. Several officers relaxed on the red couch and in metal chairs in the wood-paneled lounge, waiting for the skipper to drop in for his usual critique of the afternoon drill. The men wished Scott a happy birthday. Ensign Dave Lucas reclined nearby, a cup of coffee in one hand. The twenty-five-year-old West Virginian, who had missed the birth of his daughter five weeks earlier, had vowed to stop smoking on this cruise; otherwise he likely would have enjoyed a Marlboro from the half-full carton he kept in a drawer beneath his bunk. Dr. Richard Kiepfer, the ship’s thirty-year-old physician, chatted nearby with George Golden, the Liberty’s chief engineer and one of the ship’s few World War II veterans. Word passed over the public address system to stand clear as crews planned a routine test of the motor whaleboat engine.

McGonagle remained on the bridge. Rather than meet in the wardroom for his usual critique, the skipper planned to talk to his officers individually later in the afternoon, though he had failed to alert his men gathered below of the change. Lieutenant j.g. Lloyd Painter, a twenty-six-year-old intelligence officer from California, studied the radar at 1:55 P.M. Painter, who normally reviewed intelligence reports and helped determine spy targets, noted that the Liberty sailed seventeen and a half miles from shore, as much as five miles beyond the spy ship’s closest assigned operating area. Painter asked the skipper if he should correct the ship’s course. McGonagle checked the Liberty’s position. He sighted the minaret at El Arish, approximately twenty-five miles away. Lookouts stationed above the bridge interrupted the discussion. Two fighters zoomed toward the Liberty. McGonagle grabbed his binoculars and headed onto the starboard wing to investigate. Five to six miles out, the skipper spotted a fighter. The jet dropped to seven thousand feet as it raced on a parallel course toward the spy ship.

Others on the bridge, including Lieutenant Commander Armstrong, crowded around the portholes or joined the skipper on the wing. Lieutenant Jim O’Connor and Lieutenant Jim Ennes, Jr., both intelligence officers who had just finished watch, climbed the ladder to the flying bridge above for a better view. Another sailor grabbed a Nikon camera. Ensign Patrick O’Malley studied the radar. O’Malley, the ship’s assistant operations officer, had just arrived on bridge to begin his shift as the junior officer of the deck. He spotted more activity on the radar screen. Three blips now appeared, closing in fast on the Liberty. O’Malley summoned Painter, who peered down at the green radar screen. The older officer recognized the attack formation. He yelled to McGonagle. “We’ve got three unidentified vessels, steady bearing, decreasing range, coming right at us.” McGonagle remained focused on the approaching fighter, binoculars pressed to his eyes. Planes had reconned the Liberty all day. He had personally witnessed several of the flights. But this felt wrong. All wrong. The skipper turned to Painter. “You’d better call the forward gun mounts,” he ordered. “I think they’re going to attack.”

Painter grabbed the sound-powered phone to alert the gunners to the jets. Through one of the forward portholes, he spied the men stationed at the mounted .50-caliber machine guns on either side of the forecastle. Painter knew the guns would prove powerless against a supersonic jetfighter. The planes traveled too fast for the gunners to manually sight them in the guns’ limited one-mile range. Painter pressed the phone to his ear. Twice he tried to raise the gunners, but failed. His frustration mounted. The jets bore down on the ship. On the third try, Painter reached them. “Gun mounts 51 and 52.” Painter watched as the fighters dropped out of the sky before he could complete his sentence. He had no time to warn the men—kids really, he would later say. The guntubs vanished in a cloud of smoke and metal, the sailors blown apart with such force that friends could identify one only by his St. Christopher necklace. The explosion happened so fast that Painter would later tell the investigating board that he couldn’t determine whether the fighters hit the starboard or port gun first. He now stared at the charred machine guns, the phone still clutched in his hand.

The fighters zeroed in on the bridge, strafing the command hub with rockets and 30-mm cannons. The forward portholes exploded, sending glass and metal flying through the bridge. The quartermaster, who stood next to Painter, collapsed to the deck, bloodied with shrapnel wounds. O’Connor, on the flying bridge above, dove to the deck for safety as shrapnel ripped into his back. He tumbled down the ladder to the bridge below. Ennes, who had climbed up to the flying bridge with O’Connor, was blown against a rail. Shrapnel had broken his left femur about five inches above the knee. Blood soon soaked the left side of his uniform from dozens of shrapnel wounds as he hopped down the ladder. The skipper, who had raced in from the wing at the start of the attack, landed shoulder to shoulder with Ensign O’Malley against a rear bulkhead. Acrid smoke flooded the bridge. In the confusion, O’Malley heard someone shout general quarters. He repeated the call. The young officer turned to the skipper next to him and in a combination of shock and naïveté asked if McGonagle wanted him to sound general quarters. The skipper confirmed. O’Malley reached up and hit the alarm. But no one on the Liberty needed the alarm to alert him to the attack.

The officers and crew raced to battle stations as the jets—later identified as French-made Mirage fighters—banked and prepared for another attack. The fighters destroyed the Liberty’s machine guns, knocked out the antennae, and targeted the bridge to kill the officers and spark chaos among the crew. Shells smashed portholes, ripped gashes in sealed metal doors, and left basketball-sized craters on the bridge, deck, and smokestack. Dead and injured sailors, many of whom had been chipping paint seconds earlier, littered the decks. One sailor, with two and a half feet of his colon blown out by shrapnel, used his own blood to cool his burning skin. Even far belowdecks, explosive rounds and shrapnel zinged through bulkheads and ruptured vent pipes, lodged in bunks, and busted lights. The ship’s internal communications, including the public address system and many of the sound-powered phone circuits, soon malfunctioned and fried. Runners darted through smoke-filled passages to relay orders to repair parties, firefighters, and the engine room as the jets crisscrossed the spy ship nearly every forty-five seconds.

McGonagle grabbed the engine order telegraph, a pedestal that stood in the center of the bridge that allowed him to order speed changes with a lever. Bells five decks below in the engine room would alert crews there to increase speed. The skipper threw the lever to flank speed, ordering maximum power. The Liberty had trolled all morning at five knots, or just under six miles per hour. Compared to a supersonic fighter, the spy ship essentially stood still, an easy target. One of the ship’s two boilers was still offline. With only one boiler, McGonagle knew the Liberty’s maximum speed was only about eleven knots. To protect his crew and the ship, McGonagle needed maximum speed of eighteen knots. Even that was slow, but fighters would have a harder time targeting the Liberty at full speed; that speed also would allow him flexibility to execute evasive procedures, such as zigzagging. McGonagle shouted at his officers to broadcast an emergency message that the Liberty was under attack by unidentified fighters and needed immediate help.

Below the bridge on the port side, two fifty-five-gallon gasoline drums ignited. Fire raged on the deck and engulfed deflated life rafts stored nearby in a metal rack. Clouds of black smoke flooded the bridge. The only breathable air hovered eighteen inches above the deck. The skipper could deal with the smoke, but he feared the gasoline drums might explode. The only solution: jettison the barrels into the sea. However, flames blocked access to the quick-release lever on the portside. McGonagle recognized that someone would have to climb down to the deck and knock the drums overboard. He turned to his executive officer. Armstrong didn’t hesitate. He darted out of the starboard side of the bridge and grabbed the ladder, but there was no protection from the fighters. The rocket and cannon fire, as McGonagle would later write to Armstrong’s wife, had proven “overwhelmingly accurate and effective.” A jet slipped out of the sky before Armstrong could reach the gasoline drums. The explosion threw him to the deck. The force broke three bones in his right leg and two in his left. He couldn’t move, but he was alive.

O’Connor lay at the bottom of the ladder, where he had fallen from the flying bridge above. Shrapnel riddled his back. He had no feeling from the waist down. He couldn’t stand up, much less fight. O’Connor realized that he had to get out of the way of his uninjured colleagues. He dragged himself across the metal deck, now covered in shards of glass and twisted metal, to the Combat Information Center, located through a door in the rear of the bridge. There he found other injured sailors. Shrapnel tore through the bulkheads. A spent round landed on the deck between him and another sailor. He stared at it. O’Connor had a wife and child back home in Virginia Beach. His son would celebrate his first birthday on Sunday, three days from now. His wife, Sandy, was three months pregnant with their second son. O’Connor watched blood pool around him on the deck. He felt he was going to die. Ensign O’Malley suddenly appeared before him. The young officer and ship’s secretary noted the blood, but saw no injuries on O’Connor’s chest. He gently felt along O’Connor’s back and discovered two large holes. O’Connor instructed him to peel off his T-shirt and stuff it inside his wounds to slow the bleeding.

Lieutenant Stephen Toth stood in the door to the Combat Information Center, clutching a camera in one hand. The twenty-seven-year-old navigator told O’Malley he planned to climb to the flying bridge to photograph the fighters. The Liberty still did not know the nationality of the attackers and needed evidence. He wanted O’Malley to join him. The younger officer refused. O’Malley told Toth not to go, either, but the navigator was determined. Though normally quiet and reserved, Toth could be stubborn, often at inopportune times. His refusal to compromise had led him to divorce his beautiful Brazilian wife, whom he had married soon after graduating from the Naval Academy. She had wanted the couple to return to South America, where her family planned to set Toth up in business. Toth had refused. The son of a retired Navy captain with whom he struggled to communicate, Toth had likely felt his own family pressures. He had instead urged his new bride to stay with him in the United States. Neither would compromise. Hours after the divorce was finalized, the couple had checked into a Virginia Beach motel for one last night together.

O’Malley urged Toth one last time not to go up to the flying bridge. It was suicide; he would be totally exposed to the rocket and cannon fire. Toth again refused. O’Malley would see the navigator only one more time. Later that afternoon, several stories below the flying bridge, O’Malley would zip Toth’s remains inside a black body bag. O’Malley watched Toth turn and disappear toward the ladder, camera in hand. When he reached the top, Toth towered above the battered ship. If he looked toward the bow, the young officer would have seen the destroyed guntubs along with the bodies of his shipmates and the blood trails that stained the deck. He would have watched firefighters spraying the raging infernos. He would have witnessed stretcher bearers, already out of litters, using mattresses and blankets to haul the wounded below. Had Toth looked up, he would have seen the brilliant afternoon sun and the clear blue skies interrupted only by the smoke from the chaos below. He would have felt the warm Mediterranean sun on his face and a gentle breeze that on any other day would have been divine.