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At the same time, Libya began the installation of SA-5 Gammon surface-to-air missile batteries and radars they received from the Soviet Union in late 1985, to bolster their air defense. As the United States Navy had done for several years, they challenged Libya's claim to the Gulf of Sidra by crossing the so-called "Line of Death".
In the first Gulf of Sidra incident, 19 August 1981, two Libyan Su-22 Fitters fired upon two U.S. F-14 Tomcats and were subsequently shot down off the Libyan coast. Libya had claimed that the entire Gulf was their territory, at 32° 30′ N, with an exclusive 62-nautical-mile (115 km; 71 mi) fishing zone, which Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi asserted as "The Line of Death" in 1973. [1]
Libya responded with aggressive counter-maneuvers on 24 March that led to a naval engagement in the Gulf of Sidra. On 5 April 1986, alleged Libyan agents bombed "La Belle" nightclub in West Berlin, killing three people, including two U.S. servicemen and a Turkish woman, [12] [13] and injuring 229 people, including 79 Americans. [14]
In the spring of 1986, the U.S. Navy deployed three aircraft carrier task force groups, USS America, USS Coral Sea and USS Saratoga from the Sixth Fleet with 225 aircraft and some 30 warships across the "Line of Death" and into the disputed Gulf of Sidra. After a day of armed conflict, the operation was terminated after an unknown number of ...
On 23 March 1986, while operating off coast of Libya, aircraft from the carriers Saratoga, Coral Sea and America crossed what Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi had called the "Line of Death." The very next day at noon, three U.S. Navy warships crossed the same 32° 30' navigational line.
15 April - U.S. aircraft bombs airfields and barracks within Libya. [1] After the bombing the country was renamed Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Gaddafi announces plans for a unified African gold dinar currency, to challenge the dominance of the US Dollar and Euro currencies. The African dinar would have been measured directly ...
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Paul F. Lorence (February 17, 1955 – April 15, 1986) was a captain in the United States Air Force (USAF). A weapon systems officer (WSO), he was killed when his General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark fighter-bomber, tail number 389 and callsign Karma 52, was shot down in action off the coast of Libya on April 15, 1986 during Operation El Dorado Canyon.