Ship was not towed

TV footage showed it returning to the military port in Ashdod, Israel on its own

Ship was first towed. It only made its way to the port on its own when it reached Israel's coast. The missile severely damaged the ship's steering mechanism, and barely missed the engines. But it was definitely towed from Lebanon coast back to Israel. Do a Google news search.

Hezbollah attack

None of the newsreports cited in this article support that it was the Hanit that was hit. Anybody have any real evidence for this? --Martin Wisse 17:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, although it seems to be accepted in the 'blogosphere' now, and I've seen nothing to refute it. The only direct refs I could find were [1] and [2]. The first source I have no knowledge as to its reliability and the second let us say is not the most reliable IMHO. Riddley 17:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Duplication

There is some duplication of info on this page and Sa'ar 5-class missile boat which probably needs sorting out. Riddley 17:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright of the pic ?

I have externally linked the photo showing the damage to the INS Hanit. but I don't have a clue on the copyright status, and to be safe I have put it as ext.link, but was by a fellow of a Military/Naval Newsgroup whose now is offline and I can't get now his source. any suggestion/proposal/critics of my action ? dott.Piergiorgio 15:01, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That photo does not show a damaged ship. Adeptitus 23:13, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. The scorched area under the aft superstructure is not damage, it is due to exhaust of some kind. Every picture of the Sa'ar V class will show this.

Kh-35?

Can anyone cite references that suggest the missile might've been a Kh-35? -- Adeptitus 17:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Drone or Missile

At the risk of being seen to be attempting to turn all previous discussion on this 'on its head', is there any evidence apart from the statements made by the Israeli's that this was a missile rather than a drone as first claimed by Hezbollah. I'm particularly thinking that Hezbollah haven't retracted the claim that it was a drone.

I suspect you might immediately ask me why Israel would conceal or 'fudge' the facts on this. Well firstly 'distorting the truth' is a perfectly legitimate tactic in war (and I don't dispute this) if it delivers some advantage. In this case I am not suggesting the advantage that the Israeli's might have been seeking was to 'pin the blame on Iran' because Hezbollah's Drones (pilotless aircraft) come from Iran as well, and it could equally have been claimed that they may have had Iranians directing them (it is not an untogether unskilled task). Indeed, the advantage to the Israeli's saying that it was a missile rather than a Drone may have been two-fold. Firstly it is embarrasing to admit that something is small and slow as a drone got through the ships defences. The public perception of drones is similar to 'toy' aircraft - despite the fact that they are rapidly becoming very sophisticated and the Hezbollah models can carry up to 90kp of high explosive. It will always be tempting to call a Drone strike a missile strike because (conversely) the public perception of missiles are that they are terribly fast and hard to avoid. The second motive for Israel in suppressing talk of Drones is that they're public is currently coming to grip with the effect of unguided rockets. To have become public knowledge that Hezbollah has Drones that can be targetted with pinpoint accuracy (just as the Israeli ones are) would send shockwaves through Israel. Interestingly - and this prompted me to post - Israel has, since they downed a Hezbollah drone off the coast near Haifa, started to talk about Drones and their capabilities. BUT THEY HAVE ALSO in the meantime put up what I understand to be constant aerial cover over Israeli cities, and now have confidence they can intercept and shoot these Drones out of the sky. What I am suggesting is that it may have been prudence on the part of Israel to keep information relating to the Drone threat from their public until they had developed (and felt confident they had developed) the capacity to defeat the threat.

I might add that this has no bearing on the fact that it is likely that Hezbollah has access to anti-ship missiles, but just an interesting observation on how - in this case - truth might again be the first and the ongoing casualty in this as in other wars. Oh, and just to be controversial, what do we think of the possibility that the Cambodian ship was sunk by fire from the Israeli ship, thinking that the Cambodian one was the source of a 'whatever' hit the Israeli ship. In the confusion of the initial strike the Israeli's may have imagined (perfectly naturally) it was a shell or a torpedo, or a drone or a missile launched from a ship nearby rather than the shore. There seems been a profound 'silence' on the fate of the Cambodian ship, as if everyone has agreed not to talk about it. Tban 09:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]