re: #430 Tonic

Says I, a US surveillance ship bearing the flag looks different from a rusty Egyptian cargo boat. And if you’re attacking the ship for 30 minutes that would become apparent!

I can’t know for sure (I wasn’t there) but I will say, on the balance, it’s more likely that it was deliberate.

Where do you get these assumptions about what an Egyptian cargo ship would look like? The Liberty itself was a converted freighter and had a freighter’s lines.
If the attack was deliberate, why were the Mirage IIIs armed with 68mm rockets rather than 1000 lb pound bombs (which they could also carry)?
With their 10 lb warheads, the rockets are useful against vehicles and personnel but they are not something you would use against a ship if anything else, like large demolition bombs, were available.
For that matter, why would the Israelis use the Mirage, a capable fighter but a barely adequate attack aircraft, rather than the heavier Vautour, which had 4 times the weapons load.
The real reason is that they were diverted on the spur of the moment from a close support mission in the desert, not something you would do as part of a briefed and planned attack.