This was certainly one of the major international crisis during the Cold war period, and it surprisingly gets rather limited interest in public opinion, given it's consequenes it had in France, Britain, the arab world, Israel.... Could also be an interesting "what if" the US had decided to back the Brits?French?Israelis? Could they have suceeded?What would the reactions of the arabs have been?Or the reaction of the soviets....
American did not even need to explicitly back Britain & France, just to 'ignore' our actions. One thing I've always wondered... The Suez Canal was owned & operated by a French company. Nasser nationalised the company, claiming the canal as an Egyptian government controlled company. How is that legal? Please point out the incorrect bits - I need to know!
Actually the shares of the company were owned by Britain and France. France and Egypt had build the canal in the 1860's, but later, Britain bought the egyptian shares. Please point out the incorrect bits - I need to know![/quote] I am certainly no expert on juridictional questions, but as far as I know, tough the shares were owned by France and Britain, the company of the Suez canal was egyptian, making the nationalization an internal egyptian matter. Nasser also offered compensations for the nationalization. The concession for the canal granted by Egypt to the company of the suez canal would have ended legally in 1968. Britain and France actually never really questioned the legality of the nationalization but argued that Nasser had violated the convention of Constantinople of 1888, which guaranteed the liberty of circulation in the canal. This convention was violated by Egypt from 1949 onwards, as they refused to led israeli ships use the canal.
How the Suez crisis almost led to full scale nuclear war... or "20 mishaps that almost lef to nuclear war" http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-is ... ar-war.htm It really is an extraordianary co-incidence... Swans in formation mistaken for unidentified aircraft... Perhaps those same swans are still plotting to incite nuclear war and take over... :-?
Interesting link. They got Camberra loss wrong. English Electric Canberra PR.7, WH799, of No 58 Sqn RAF, on attachment to No 13 Sqn, Akrotiri, Cyprus, 1956. This aircraft was shot down by two pairs of Syrian AF Meteor F.8s over the Syrian-Lebanese frontier on November 6, 1956. Crew: pilot: Flt.lt. B.L. (Bernie) Hunter navigator: Flg. Off. G. R. (Roy) Erquhart-Pullen KIA lookout: Flt. Lt. A. C. (Sam) Small (another Canberra pilot) Plane crashed just inside Syrian territory. Both surviving crew members landed just inside Lebanon. They were taken to border post intorrogated by Syrian officer and tranfered to Beirut hospital and from there back to Cyprus. Syrian Meteor F-8 Source ( check other articles on the site): http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_258.shtml
