Liberty commenced at 2:00 p.m. Israel time on June 8, 1967. The USS Liberty was 13 miles off the coast of Gaza and moving slowly at five knots. The crew had observed several flyovers by Israeli reconnaissance planes earlier in the day. When the USS Liberty was struck, it was struck with an awesome force. According to USSLiberty.org, a website created by the survivors to document and expose the truth, the ship was first struck by Israeli fighter aircraft: “Israeli fighter aircraft launched a rocket attack on USS Liberty. The aircraft made repeated firing passes, attacking USS Liberty with rockets and their internal cannons. After the first flight of fighter aircraft had exhausted their ordnance, subsequent flights of Israeli fighter aircraft continued to prosecute the attack with rockets,cannon fire, and napalm. During the air attack, USS Liberty’s crew had difficulty contacting Sixth Fleet to request assistance due to intense communications jamming. The initial targets on the ship were the command bridge, communications antennas, and the four .50 caliber machine guns, placed on the ship to repel boarders. After the Israeli fighter aircraft completed their attacks, three Israeli torpedo boats arrived and began a surface attack about 35 minutes after the start of the air attack. The torpedo boats launched a total of five torpedoes, one of which struck the side of USS Liberty, opposite the ship’s research spaces. [20] Twenty-six Americans in addition to the eight who had been killed in the earlier air attacks, were killed as a result of this explosion. Following their