Libya, at 6 a.m. on September 1, 1969, as usual, many people turned on their radios and listened to the Quran broadcast by Radio Benghazi. Suddenly, the radio was interrupted, followed by a military music, and then a man's voice was heard: "O great Libyan people, on the order of the Allah of relief and mercy, declare to you: In order to fulfill your free will, to realize your precious will, to respond genuinely to your repeated calls for change, for purity, for action and pre-emptive action, for revolution and aggression, your armed forces have destroyed the reactionary, backward and decaying regime ..." Many people were stunned by this sudden "declaration", including an old couple in a tent in the Sirte Desert, who looked at each other and were stunned, because although the speaker did not announce his name, they still heard the familiar voice, and the person who announced on the radio that the overthrow of King Idris was their youngest son, Muammar Gaddafi.
Young Gaddafi
In fact, it wasn't until a week later that it was learned that the coup was launched by the 27-year-old formerly unknown Signal Corps Lieutenant Gaddafi. And the whole coup from beginning to end was chaotic, absurd and funny, enough to go down in history.
Late on the night of August 31, 1969, Gaddafi and the young officers acted as planned.
He first ordered his important assistant Omar Mihesh to take an evening flight to the capital Tripoli to take over the barracks. When Mihesh arrived at The Benghazi Airport, he found that the plane was full and could not go up. Thankfully, he found an acquaintance who worked at the airport and boarded the plane through the back door. When he arrived in Tripoli, he stopped a taxi and drove to the barracks, and when he got out of the car, he actually left the weapons and ammunition he was carrying on the car (equivalent to going with only one mouth with his bare hands).
In Benghazi, it was planned that Gaddafi and two other captains would take over camp bekaa and the radio at 1 a.m. Before leaving, two gendarmes suddenly came and asked Gaddafi and a few of them to repair the motorcycle, and Gaddafi pushed back and said that he would fix it tomorrow, and after sending the two gendarmes away, one of the captains became frightened again, saying that they had been exposed. Gaddafi is still more courageous, insisting that he must start tonight. He loaded a jeep with weapons and ammunition and drove first in the direction of Radio Benghazi. However, halfway through the road, Gaddafi looked back and found that he was the only one left on the road, and the "comrades- in arms" behind him were gone. It turned out that at a previous intersection, his convoy of retinue was heading in the direction of Bekaa Barracks. The "leader" suddenly became the "light rod commander".
What is even more ridiculous is that the officer in charge of the occupied National Radio Tripoli drove around and did not find the radio station, but had to return the same way. The two officers in charge of the air defense unit outside Tripoli, commanding 600 soldiers, only to find that only 1,050 rounds of ammunition were available by the time of the operation, fortunately there was no need for an exchange of fire along the way.
In this way, such a hasty and chaotic coup d'état actually succeeded. It was a bloodless coup d'état, and the revolutionary army only had a small exchange of fire during the raid on the Benghazi Royal Guard, killing 1 and wounding 15.
Finally, back to the morning broadcast. After taking people into radio stations in Benghazi, Gaddafi went directly to the radio room on duty and asked the broadcasters to play military songs. When Gaddafi asked the broadcaster to record a statement for his revolution, the broadcaster was clearly frightened and flustered. In the end, Gaddafi had to personally go into battle and read his "revolutionary manifesto" into the microphone, and the "manifesto" was only a few "points" written on a piece of paper, and the rest was improvised by him.
Here's a historical backdrop: After World War II, many of the once colonized Third World countries gained sovereign freedom. However, these countries often do not directly move towards a "new era" of democracy and civilization (of course, Western democracy and civilization are also flawed and one-sided), but instead give birth to many dictatorial "new monarchs".