WI: six days war went nuclear?

Tovarich

Banned
you suggested a planned and coordinated attack on the USS Liberty that wasn't a friendly fire incident.

I did not "suggest" any such thing - I stated it outright, which is still not a 'conspiracy theory'!
It would be a conspiracy-theory if I suggested some shadowy NGO was guarding all reporting of the incident, but I'm not. I just think that, 40 years after the incident, neither Israel nor the US want to talk about it, and they probably won't much in the near future!
(Does anything like the 30/50/100 Year Rule release of documents happen in the US or Israel? If so, maybe 2017 and 2067 could be interesting years).
Frankly, I think for the Israeli Navy and Air Force, at the same time, acting on separate independent operations, to both mistake a US flag-flying USN vessel, whose presence in the vicinity they were aware of, for something else (like what, exactly?) is ASB-level coincidence.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Durring the six day war, Isreal already had at least two nuclear weapons, and was prepared to use them if the war went badly enough for them. So what if the war did go badly, and what if Isreal had used the nuclear weapons it had at the time, dropping one on Damascus, and one on Cario?

Truthfully, the closest the Israelis ever got to a nuclear release was during the Yom Kippur War. And even then it never actually got talked about AT ALL by the high command (Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, etc.).

Hell, I can cite sources for it if you want to check it out.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I did not "suggest" any such thing - I stated it outright, which is still not a 'conspiracy theory'!
It would be a conspiracy-theory if I suggested some shadowy NGO was guarding all reporting of the incident, but I'm not. I just think that, 40 years after the incident, neither Israel nor the US want to talk about it, and they probably won't much in the near future!
(Does anything like the 30/50/100 Year Rule release of documents happen in the US or Israel? If so, maybe 2017 and 2067 could be interesting years).
Frankly, I think for the Israeli Navy and Air Force, at the same time, acting on separate independent operations, to both mistake a US flag-flying USN vessel, whose presence in the vicinity they were aware of, for something else (like what, exactly?) is ASB-level coincidence.


Okay...

Six Days of War by Michael Oren, The Arab-Israeli Conflict by David Lesch, and Six Days in June by Eric Hammel all say you're wrong.

I don't know if you've ever been in the military, but I've served in two of them. And do you know what surprises me about a mistaken attack on a naval ship by a friendly power? That it hasn't happened more often.

I don't know where people get this idea that the Israelis did it on purpose. Because in order to do that, you have to be able to completely disregard the fact that they could've fucked up.
 
It happened in 1956 when an Egyptian ship began shelling Israeli forces on the coast of the Sinai.

The Israelis called for help and the Israeli Air Force arrived to bomb the British destroyer which had arrived and driven off the Egyptian vessel...
 
I think in order to get the war nuclear, your going to have to get the Arabs to fight better. Now traditionally, the Arabs actually don't preform that badly in set piece battles, but the Israelis always manage to turn the war into a fluid one, in which the Arabs cannot fight well due to the incompetence of the junior offices.

Maybe if you could get the Arabs to seriously improve their junior officer corps before the war, this could do it, but that is much easier said than done. The kind of political and military culture that the Arabs have would have to be transformed.
 
I think that perhaps if they had fired the weapons, and if the Arab States had fired back, then one: we would be having a sort of nuclear winter somewhere, and two: the US would have immediately gone to Israel's side, if able, and helped them against the Araba, and thus, in the wrost case scenario, led to another world war, because at the time of this happening, if the US helped the Israelis, this might have resulted in the Soviets sending nuclear weapons to the Arabs, and making political tensions even more so than they already were
 
I think that perhaps if they had fired the weapons, and if the Arab States had fired back, then one: we would be having a sort of nuclear winter somewhere

:confused: The Arab states didn't have nuclear weapons. Still don't, for that matter. And the Israelis almost certainly didn't have enough nuclear weapons in 1967 to trigger a nuclear winter.
 
A coordinated Air Force/Naval attack is not 'friendly fire' like a single US jet accidentally bombing a British APC....or an Iraqi civilian shelter....or an Afghan wedding.....or a Chinese Embassy.
These accidental incidents can be explained as incidents by the sheer scale of US Forces/operations, but the Liberty attack required planning.

So when the Allies wrecked the airborne forces in Sicily was this a co-ordinated attack or was it simply the result of friendly fire and incompetence meeting modern firepower?
 
It happened in 1956 when an Egyptian ship began shelling Israeli forces on the coast of the Sinai.

The Israelis called for help and the Israeli Air Force arrived to bomb the British destroyer which had arrived and driven off the Egyptian vessel...

Ah, yes, HMS Crane (U23). It was attacked by a formation of four Israeli Mysteres. The Mysteres put three rockets into the hull on the starboard side, which caused internal damage, and one rocket actually passed through the ship. Also sustained some external damage and had 3 wounded when the IAF planes strafed her and dropped small bombs that released shrapnel. She had to be decommissioned the following year

During the engagement, Crane returned fire and shot down an Israeli jet. Another was damaged and seen trailing smoke, and according to a Royal Navy veteran on Flickr, British sailors were later told it never made it back to base.
 
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Why would the USA retaliate for a Friendly Fire-type incident?

Yeah there was a thread over at James Randi Educational Forum about this a few weeks ago. Basically there are still people who refuse to be believe the friendly fire explanation and that the US conspired to cover things up. Total CT nonsense OTL but I suppose if you were looking at an ATL you might come up with a POD for that; not that the conspiracy theorists ever managed a plausible explanation.

ETA: my bad didn't read all the posts before replying and thus didn't realize that the deliberate attack theory had been brought up here.
 
Yeah there was a thread over at James Randi Educational Forum about this a few weeks ago. Basically there are still people who refuse to be believe the friendly fire explanation and that the US conspired to cover things up. Total CT nonsense OTL but I suppose if you were looking at an ATL you might come up with a POD for that; not that the conspiracy theorists ever managed a plausible explanation.

ETA: my bad didn't read all the posts before replying and thus didn't realize that the deliberate attack theory had been brought up here.
Except of course that every single crewman alive from the Liberty differs with you. So do other reputable sources including James Bamford, authority on the NSA. It's not the first time Israel has attacked neutral parties- they killed a number of peacekeepers in the Six-day war- some by running over.

Secretary Rusk himself stated that he did not believe the attack was accidental. So did Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. So did the then-director of the NSA. I trust them over a few authors, McNamara and LBJ.
 
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