Stay Afloat: From That Day to Today

STAY AFLOAT is a firsthand memoir of survival, silence, and the long fight to tell the truth about one of the most controversial incidents in modern U.S. naval history: the June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War.

Told in the steady voice of survivor Phil Tourney, this book begins with the raw reality of that day in international waters: the chaos, the damage, the loss, and the immediate confusion. But the attack was only the beginning. What followed was a decades-long shadow of dismissal, pressure to stay quiet, and a story that many Americans were never taught in school or shown in mainstream media.

This is not a political book. It is a truth-and-memory book. It is about what happens when institutions protect narratives, when history becomes inconvenient, and when ordinary people are expected to move on without answers. Through Phil's eyes, readers see how a young sailor becomes a man who refuses to let his shipmates be reduced to a footnote, and how the modern rise of independent media and social platforms finally reopened public curiosity about the USS Liberty.

STAY AFLOAT is for readers who care about military history, U.S. Navy stories, government transparency, and the human cost of a cover-up. It is also for anyone who believes patriotism and accountability can coexist, and that free people have a responsibility to examine the uncomfortable parts of their own history.

Some stories don't disappear because they're false. They disappear because they're inconvenient. Phil Tourney spent a lifetime refusing to let this one sink.