They sometimes mentioned risks that Iraq would use Scuds or other shorter-range conventional missiles, or they brought up its antiaircraft attacks on American patrols over the no-flight zones in the north and south of the country.
Its crew members survived tropical thunderstorms, antiaircraft fire, attacks from Japanese Zeros, low fuel and a perilous landing on Australia's remote north coast, where they were aided by aborigines.
These new armoured monoplanes could endure heavy antiaircraft fire while attacking tanks and troop columns at very close range.
General McNeill continued to insist that American planes had come under antiaircraft fire before they attacked in an area where witnesses reported that villagers at a wedding celebration had been killed or wounded.
The Pentagon said after the attack that it had been responding to antiaircraft fire aimed at allied planes.
Mr. Muri, who died on Feb. 3 in Laurel, Mont., at 94, first had to evade the hail of antiaircraft fire still coming from the carrier he had just attacked.
Since the Friday attacks, the air raid sirens and intense Iraqi antiaircraft fire that met each new wave of American aircraft have been sharply diminished, to the point that there was virtually no ground-to-air fire visible by Sunday night.
The United States military's central command, in Tampa, Fla., said Navy and Marine Corps attack jets and British Tornadoes struck antiaircraft artillery targets after "repeated antiaircraft fire" against jets patrolling the southern no-flight zone.
The preliminary investigation also failed to establish precisely what caused the attack, and in particular whether the American planes had been the target of antiaircraft fire.
By Monday night, explosions and antiaircraft fire could be heard in and around Tripoli in the third straight day of attacks. 1 2 Next Page » Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya.
