by James Scott
Even if he survived the blast, Ensign Scott knew, the ship would lose power. He fished his flashlight out of his desk drawer in Damage Control Central and ordered the phone talkers to brace themselves. He thought again that today was his twenty-fourth birthday. James Halman, who desperately had tried to alert the Sixth Fleet of the attack, dropped his microphone, stepped into the passageway, and lay down along with the other radiomen. If he died, Halman hoped his death would be swift. Over in the Liberty’s sick bay, Dr. Kiepfer realized that many of the injured had no way to protect themselves, so the towering doctor lay across the wounded. An injured sailor on a table in the mess deck below turned to Seaman George Wilson and told him he was scared. The sailor asked Wilson, injured and stretched out on a table beside him, to pray for them. “Praised be God,” Wilson began as sailors on nearby tables joined him. “All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!”
Up on the bridge at 2:34 P.M. McGonagle spotted a torpedo racing through the water. He would later tell Navy investigators that he watched the torpedo miss the Liberty’s stern by only twenty-five yards. Unbeknownst to the skipper, the Israelis had launched five torpedoes. The Liberty had no time to take evasive maneuvers. McGonagle could only hope that a torpedo did not hit the engine room. One minute after the near miss, an explosion rocked the ship. One of the five had hit its target. Many of the sailors later would say the blast lifted the Liberty out of the water before it settled back down. The generators shut down, power went out, and the steering failed as the Liberty became dead in the water. McGonagle peered over the starboard side and saw oil and debris flood out into the sea. Darkness settled over the Liberty as the ship started to roll.
Eikleberry never heard the blast. Stretched out on the deck of the research space he reminded himself that the ladder that led to the deck above was nearby. The compartment where he lay was below the waterline. The torpedo’s explosion bathed Eikleberry in a terrific heat. The blast lifted him off the deck and dropped him on his stomach; his gray-rimmed glasses fell to the floor. The overhead lights shattered and shards of scalding glass rained down. He felt the tiny pieces burn his back as he fumbled for his glasses in the dark. Smoke flooded the room. He slipped on his glasses and took stock of the damage. The torpedo had destroyed the bulkhead that separated the compartment from the passageway. Eikleberry could see straight into the room across the hall. Through the smoke, he saw fire and a red glow that provided the only light in the wrecked spaces. He heard debris crash down around him, but he did not see anyone else nor hear voices. Am I dead? he thought. Why is it so quiet? He then heard someone yell out. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Eikleberry crawled to his feet and took two steps over the remains of the bulkhead. The cold seawater already was up to his waist. He peered through the coordination room that once sat across the hall. The bulkhead that had separated that room from the adjoining communication room had vaporized. He stared at the torpedo hole. Water rushed inside the ship. It flowed fast, he thought, like a river. When Eikleberry reached the emergency hatch a few steps away, the water had risen to his neck. Sailors paddled around the ladder, urging one another to remain calm and patient as one by one the men scurried up. The water continued to rise. Eikleberry’s turn finally came. He locked on to the ladder and climbed. Men reached down from above, grabbed his arms, and pulled him through the hatch. He had made it out alive. A sailor handed him a life preserver out of a box as word passed to prepare to abandon ship.
Jeff Carpenter, who had been in the compartment across the hall from Eikleberry, flew across the room when the torpedo exploded. He landed on his back and wondered, like Eikleberry, if he was dead. The cold rush of seawater assured him he had survived. Daylight briefly filtered through the torpedo hole and illuminated the room before the ship rolled back to starboard and the majority of the hole dropped beneath the water. The water rose and Carpenter tried to stand up to escape but found his leg pinned beneath a desk. The water slipped over his head. He panicked and jerked his leg but still could not free it. Carpenter thought drowning might not be the worst way to die. He took a mouthful of seawater. He calmed down and realized he needed to fight. Carpenter began to twist his leg. Seconds later he freed it and popped to the surface. He heard someone yell for help as he paddled toward the emergency hatch.
When the torpedo exploded, Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert Schnell saw a ball of orange flame before a flying desk knocked him unconscious. The seawater woke him up. Darkness settled over the compartment and he could smell smoke and fuel oil. Schnell grabbed hold of the steam pipes that once crisscrossed the compartment and pulled himself along the ceiling toward the ladder. Like Eikleberry, he found a crowd of sailors anxious to escape. Crews had sealed the compartment’s larger hatch when the general quarters alarm sounded, leaving only the scuttle open. To alleviate the jam, sailors needed to open the hatch. Schnell climbed out and learned that sailors had tried to open it, but had found the hatch jammed. The twenty-four-year-old former college halfback, who had played in the 1962 Junior Rose Bowl, grabbed a hammer. He pounded the latches loose and yanked the hatch open. Men flowed out of the flooded compartment. Schnell did the opposite. He turned, climbed back down, and searched for survivors.
The torpedo had reduced the research spaces to a clutter of broken radio receivers, filing cabinets, desks, and chairs that sloshed about in the seawater. The blast had toppled the bulkheads that once divided the cavernous space into rooms and offices. Electrical wires and steam pipes now sagged from the ceiling. Sparks rained down. The Mediterranean rushed through a gash that investigators would later measure at thirty-nine feet wide and twenty-four feet high. Most of the teardrop-shaped hole was below the waterline. The more the Liberty rolled toward starboard, the greater the torrent of seawater. The explosion had killed twenty-five sailors. Bodies and body parts now floated in the water along with classified papers, key cards, and intercept tapes. Voices cried out for help. Disoriented survivors struggled to navigate a safe path through the twisted debris and razor-sharp metal toward the faint light of the open hatch that served as a beacon in the dark.
Bryce Lockwood fumbled for an exit. The explosion blew the Marine’s glasses off, singed his face, and ruptured his right eardrum. Knocked to the deck, Lockwood felt the cold seawater and thought of his wife, Lois, and his three young children, two girls and a boy. He recently had updated his insurance policy and passed power of attorney to his wife. Lockwood felt relief that his family would be all right if he didn’t survive. The seawater covered his legs as he struggled to his feet. The emergency lights had failed, but he could see the hatch thanks to the light that filtered through the torpedo hole. Lockwood stumbled across a sailor trapped under a collapsed bulkhead near the ladder. The water level rose as Lockwood reached down and grabbed the sailor beneath his arms. He pulled on the man to free him. Water rose and the injured sailor choked. Another sailor dove down to free the sailor’s leg and then others hoisted him through the hatch.
Lockwood spotted another injured sailor who floated toward the torpedo hole. He latched on to the man and turned back toward the ladder. Shrapnel had damaged the rail and fuel oil from ruptured tanks in the bowels of the ship made the rungs slippery. Lockwood struggled to climb as he held on to the injured sailor. Halfway up the ladder he grasped the damaged portion of the rail and dropped the sailor. The man floated back toward the torpedo hole as Lockwood dove down and chased after him. He grabbed the sailor and returned to the ladder. This time Lockwood slipped on the rungs and again dropped the injured man. His frustration mounted as he chased after the injured sailor for a third time. Goddammit, he thought. I’ve gotten this far with him. I’m not going to let him get away now.
But when he reached the top of the ladder, Lockwood looked up to find the hatch now sealed. The sailors above had assumed all of the survivors had crawled out and had closed the hatch. Lockwood was trapped as the water rose. He held on to the injured man with one hand and used his other to pound on the bottom of
the hatch. No one came. Lockwood pounded again and shouted. The water continued to climb. The experience would prove so traumatic that years later Lockwood would wake at night beneath his bed, banging on the box springs and pleading for someone to let him out. The hatch popped open. The oil-soaked Marine stared up at Petty Officer 3rd Class Phillip Tourney, a damage control crewman who had come down to inspect the hatches. “Goddamn squids!” Lockwood shouted, using the Marine’s derogatory term for sailors. “Run off and shut me in down here.”
The torpedo’s explosion threw Ensign Scott and the phone talkers to the deck in Damage Control Central. The safe door blew open, logbooks crashed to the floor, and the metal filing cabinet that had been bolted to the deck tumbled over. The room went dark and acrid smoke flooded the office. Scott’s ears rang and throat burned, but he was alive. The torpedo had dodged damage control, but Scott judged from the force of the blast that it had not missed by much. He assumed that it had hit the research spaces forward of the bridge. Though he determined that the torpedo had missed the engine room, Scott knew the ship still might sink. The young officer felt the Liberty roll to the port side from the force of the explosion. The rush of seawater into the flooded spaces one deck below prompted the ship seconds later to roll back to starboard.
Scott fumbled in the dark for his flashlight on the floor beside him. He aimed it at the inclinometer suspended from the ceiling. He knew that the weight of the seawater that now flooded the torpedoed spaces could capsize the ship. If the Liberty capsized, he knew it would sink and likely before many of the men would have a chance to jump overboard. He felt the ship roll. The inclinometer jumped from two degrees to three then five. Stop, Scott thought. Stop now. Stop this shit. He didn’t need the inclinometer to tell him the ship was rolling. He could feel the unsettling rise of the ship in the pit of his stomach. Through the smoke, he read the inclinometer as it climbed to six degrees, then seven, eight, and nine. “Come on, stop!” he now shouted. “Stop. Stop. Stop.” The roll began to slow as the inclinometer ticked up to ten degrees, then eleven. The roll froze at twelve degrees. The Liberty groaned.
The young officer felt the injured ship begin to roll back toward port. The inclinometer dropped to eleven degrees and then ten before it finally stabilized at nine. The bridge called down to the repair party in the engine room and ordered the men there to take over for Damage Control Central. The skipper had assumed that the torpedo had killed Scott and his men. Scott ordered the phone talker to call the bridge. “Tell the captain we’re still here,” he said. “We’re still running.” Scott climbed to his feet and stumbled into the passageway to survey the damage and determine precisely where the torpedo had hit. Sailors must dog down the watertight hatches and seal off the flooded compartments. The ship could remain afloat only if damage control teams isolated the flooded spaces. The emergency lights illuminated the passageway. Through the smoke, Scott could see that the blast had forced the steel deck beneath his feet to crumple. Around his ankles, he felt cold water.
Scott ordered one of his men to race to the forward repair locker and recruit more sailors. He instructed the sailor to tell the others to retrieve mattresses to cover the holes in the deck and slow the flooding. He kneeled down and stuck his hand through a hole. When he pulled it out, Scott found it black with fuel oil. The fuel tanks had ruptured. Moments later the bridge passed a message to standby for the possibility of another torpedo attack. Scott had determined that with its watertight hatches secured the Liberty could remain afloat. But he knew another torpedo hit, regardless of where it struck, would sink the ship. He ordered the phone talkers to relay that message to the bridge. Scott instructed his men that if another torpedo hit to immediately abandon ship. Drop your equipment, he told them, grab your life preserver, and head up the ladder and overboard. That was the only way the men might survive.
When the torpedo exploded, Chief Petty Officer Brooks had plummeted from atop a catwalk in the engine room to the metal grate below. Asbestos insulation and soot rained down. The blast even vibrated one of the lights out of its socket. The Liberty’s generators died, leaving the engine room in darkness along with the rest of the ship. Communication with the bridge also failed. Sailors grabbed battle lanterns to read gauges. George Golden would later tell Navy investigators that 20-mm cannon shells and armor-piercing machine gun rounds fired from Israeli torpedo boats tore through the sides of the engine room. A boilerman would later find one bullet dug into an interior bulkhead. Men shouted that the research space had been torpedoed. Brooks looked up to spot wet sailors who had climbed out of the torpedoed spaces pass through the engine room en route to higher decks. He did not have time to dwell on it, but had to restore power. Brooks shouted to the electricians to hustle.
Scott bypassed the engine room and charged over to the research spaces to inspect the torpedo’s damage. He arrived at the hatch to find Tourney, who had just pulled Lockwood from below. Seawater flooded the research spaces, leaving only about a foot of air near the top. The water continued to rise and the men had to seal the hatch again. The safety of the ship demanded it, but Scott felt reluctant. What if men were still alive below? If he sealed the hatch, Scott knew any survivors would die. The water continued to rise. He had precious minutes to decide. He ordered Tourney to give him his belt. Scott fished the belt through the loop on his waterproof flashlight and dunked it in the water below. Tourney grabbed a wrench and banged on the hatch. The men hoped that any survivors, disoriented in the darkness, would see the light and find the exit. Scott leaned over the hatch. He could hear the pop and fizzle of electrical equipment in the water below.
Robert Schnell had climbed out of the torpedoed spaces only to return to rescue injured sailors. In the minutes after the explosion, Schnell made several trips into the flooded compartment as the water level rose. He plucked Dave Lewis, his eardrums ruptured and eyelids seared shut with Navy paint, from the water, then returned again to help others. With each trip, the water deepened. Schnell shouted for survivors in the dark. Sparks fluttered around him as he picked his way through the tangle of desks, crypto equipment, and wires. He had seen bodies floating in the oily water and found pieces of others. Schnell found himself alone, unsure of how to get out. The water neared the top of the compartment. He heard a bang and saw a light. He pulled himself along the pipes and wires that ran along the ceiling. He emerged seconds later from the hatch, winded and covered in fuel oil. He assured Scott and Tourney that no one else was alive down there. The men sealed the hatch.
Up on the bridge, McGonagle focused on the attackers. Before the torpedo hit, the injured skipper had spotted an Israeli flag on one of the boats, but he wanted more evidence. He clutched the camera that he had used to take pictures of fighters and now trained it on the torpedo boats that zipped past the spy ship. The boats continued to fire 20-and 40-mm cannons and armor-piercing machine gun rounds at the Liberty, but no torpedoes. Bullets sliced through the bulkheads of the engine room, mess deck, and the bridge. Spent shells rolled around on deck. The skipper summoned Lucas onto the starboard wing. One of the torpedo boats passed five hundred yards off the starboard side, traveling in the opposite direction from the Liberty. At 2:40 P.M.—five minutes after the torpedo hit—the young officer spotted one of the torpedo boat’s hull numbers painted in white on the dark bow: 206–17, though what he read as 17 actually was the letter Tet, the ninth letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Lucas relayed the information to McGonagle. “Log it,” the skipper ordered. Lucas obeyed, jotting down the first entry in the ship’s log since moments before the attack began.
McGonagle shouted to the men to take cover. Rounds and shrapnel tore through the walls and the open hatch on the starboard side. Francis Brown remained at the helm to guide the ship. Brown stepped back for protection but left one hand on the wheel. He gasped and dropped to the deck. Petty Officer 2nd Class Charles Cocnavitch, one of the Liberty’s radarmen, darted onto the bridge to pull Brown out of the way. Cocnavitch slipped on the blood that soaked the de
ck. Brown’s eyes were open in an empty stare. He had been hit in the back of the head. Cocnavitch realized that Brown had died before he hit the deck. Ensign Lucas, who had been two steps behind Brown, took the helm. Lucas found that neither the gyrocompass nor the rudder angle indicator worked. Most of the other navigational equipment also had failed and the ship now aimed north. The bridge switched control to the after-steering department, where crews could manually move the rudder.
If the Liberty were to sink, McGonagle recognized, it was not in deep enough water to guarantee that another nation might not be able to salvage the classified equipment and material. The skipper instead planned to ground the injured Liberty on nearby shoals. Despite his intention, word passed to prepare to abandon ship. Throughout the Liberty, sailors responded. Cocnavitch heard the order passed over the sound-powered phones in the radar room and filled weighted bags. In Damage Control Central, Scott torched confidential manuals and papers in his wastebasket. Petty Officer Halman burned the radio authentication codes. Dr. Kiepfer prepared to move the wounded. Lieutenant Painter climbed up a ladder toward deck to prepare the life rafts. Painter discovered someone had already dropped several overboard. Through the hatch, he watched in horror as one of the torpedo boats zoomed past and machine-gunned the rubber rafts. There was no way now to abandon ship.
The torpedo boats soon halted fire and loitered as much as eight hundred yards off the stern of the Liberty. McGonagle trained his binoculars on them. The men on the Liberty did not know whether the boats might attack again. At 3:03 P.M.—one hour and five minutes after the attack began—one of the torpedo boats zoomed toward the Liberty. A signalman grabbed the handheld Aldis lamp and repeatedly flashed “US Naval Ship.” When the torpedo boat closed to a distance of five hundred yards, it turned astern and slowed. The boat signaled in English: “Do you need help?” McGonagle ordered a signalman to flash a negative reply. The torpedo boat signaled: ”Do you want us to stand by?” The skipper again ordered the signalman to flash “No, thank you.” The torpedo boat closed to within one hundred yards of the port side and flashed “good luck” before it zoomed two minutes later toward shore.