Dear Sir:
I just read on American Thinker your article on the USS Liberty in the 1967 war. It immediately brought to mind an incident that happened in the Yom Kippur War that I was involved in.
I entered the US Navy in the summer of 1972 immediately
after finishing my internship at the University of
California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento. I was assigned to a destroyer squadron in San Diego. A few weeks later we deployed to Vietnam. When we returned to the US in the summer of 1973 I was told that I could request an assignment to any other unit that needed a medical officer based anywhere as a "reward" for my Vietnam service. I requested Europe as my wife and I wanted to travel abroad. (I was not counting Vietnam as "travel abroad".) I was sent to Athens, Greece, as the medical officer for Destroyer Squadron 12 that was homeported there. I got there in September of 1973. Leaving one war and getting into another one was not part of my plans, but, as the poet Burns said, things can "gang aft agley".
When the Yom Kippur War started the squadron was immediately ordered to sea although we were told to stay out of the area of active operations between the Arabs and Israelis. As the war progressed that changed and things became much more dangerous for us. The Russians threatened to intervene and Nixon threatened to land the USMC. The Sixth Fleet moved to the eastern Mediterranean, west of Israel and north of Egypt. I was embarked on one of the DesRon 12 ships, the USS Richard L. Page (DEG-5). The normal Sixth Fleet formation has the aircraft carrier in the center and concentric rings of smaller ships that act as defense lines for the carrier. One night the Page was on the outer ring and was the closest US ship to Israel.
We had finished dinner and the officers were in the wardroom watching a movie. The phone rang and the CO answered, spoke a few words, then hung up and said, "Everybody to your duty stations!" as he was hurrying out of the room. The Page had picked up several small surface contacts coming from Haifa and heading straight for the center of the Sixth Fleet formation. They appeared to be some sort of PT boats. Numerous attempts were made to contact them on all the known Israeli Navy frequencies and international frequencies. There was no response.
The Page had only one five-inch cannon that could be used as
a defense against those boats (it was primarily an air defense ship), and I
think we were not in range even for that. Fortunately, it was standard
practice to have "SurfCAP" up in the air 24/7. This was an
aircraft from the carrier designated for surface carrier air protection.
Believe me, every officer on the Page knew about the USS Liberty incident and
was thinking, "Surely not! Not again!"
The Page CO ordered SurfCAP to the course of the suspected PT boats and he buzzed them low enough to get a visual ID on them. SurfCAP reported they were indeed PT boats and flying the Israeli flag. The Page tried once more to communicate on the Israeli Navy frequency and this time they answered. They replied that they were going out to escort an Israeli tanker into Haifa harbor. Their radars were too short-range to pick up the Sixth Fleet. We told them of the danger their present course was putting them in and told them to change course in such a way as to take them around the Sixth Fleet formation. We confirmed that there was an Israeli civilian tanker west of the Sixth Fleet formation. The PT boats immediately moved to the course the Page recommended and we all stood down.
At the time of this incident, most of us were not aware of
all the investigation results, testimony of the Liberty CO, etc. We just
remembered that the Israeli AF and Navy had attacked the USS Liberty six years
earlier. In the "Fog of War" bad things can happen as events
are unfolding rapidly and decisions have to be made based on only partial
information or sometimes no information. Fortunately, this particular
incident ended with no shots fired and never making the news. It is
probably forgotten by almost everyone, except those of us who were there.
Yours truly,
Sid Bondurant, MD
LCDR, MC, USNR (Ret.)
Madison, Mississippi
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