World Affairs Board - View Single Post - USS New Jersey in Lebanon Channeling Thread

Shipwreck · 03-21-2008, 07:05 AM

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NAVY CHIEF DISPUTED ON BEIRUT SHELLING

By RICHARD HALLORAN (NYT); Foreign Desk
February 15, 1984, Wednesday
Late City Final Edition, Section A, Page 8, Column 1, 738 words

The Secretary of the Navy, John F. Lehman Jr., said today that United States naval guns had been firing into Lebanon to support Lebanese forces, but he was immediately contradicted by the chief White House and Pentagon spokesmen. Mr. Lehman, in a meeting with reporters, said: ''There very definitely ...

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Mr. Lehman provided fresh details on how the New Jersey and other ships were firing at their targets. He said an Army unit equipped with new radar devices and computers at the Beirut airport was able to spot incoming projectiles, to plot their trajectories and to compute the point from which they were fired. The information from the Army's Target Acquisition Battery was then sent to the New Jersey several miles offshore and fed into computers to direct the fire of the ship's 16-inch guns.

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Asked about casualties, Mr. Lehman said that ''we had intelligence reports that there was a Syrian general killed, but we cannot confirm that.'' He said the United States had tried to avoid civilian casualties in picking targets but could not guarantee that.

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He said clouds over Lebanon had prevented aerial reconnaissance. Weather reports from the Beirut region showed that the two days after the firing were cloudy, the third was clear, the next two rainy and the next day clear. Defense Department spokesmen have been unable to say flights went out on clear days.