mixed crews from the Air Force and Navy. In the 1980s, "Naval Air Facility" Sigonella was redesignated as a "Naval Air Station". In 1983 the base was named after World War II pilot Captain Cosimo Di Palma (it), who was shot down by the Luftwaffe while on a mission with the Italian Co-belligerent Air Force and was honored with the Gold medal of Military Valor. On the night of 10 October 1985, there were tense hours on NAS II when the Italian Carabinieri, Italian Air Force, and the US Army's Delta Force came close to firing upon one another following the interception by US Navy F-14 Tomcat fighters of an Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, which had been commandeered by members of the PLO on 7 October. The hijackers had killed a Jewish American Leon Klinghoffer. The F-14s instructed the Egyptian plane to land at Sigonella where the Americans had planned to take the hijackers into custody. The Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi instead claimed the hijackers were under Italian jurisdiction. The Italian authorities, therefore, refused to allow the Navy SEALs to board the plane, threatening to open fire on the Americans had they made an attempt to do so. The ensuing stand-off lasted throughout the night, until President Ronald Reagan gave the orders for the Americans to stand down. The hijackers were eventually tried and sentenced by an Italian court. In late 1985, work crews belonging to NMCB 133 were repairing and installing sidewalks in the housing area at NAS I when they uncovered a small stockpile of Luftwaffe antiaircraft ammunition. The stockpile had apparently belonged to an antiaircraft position that had been buried during raids in the Allied invasion of 1943. On 1 April 2004, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) opened Defense Depot Sigonella Italy on NAS II to serve as a supply base for the Mediterranean. DLA also provides fuel and property disposal from NAS II. Sigonella suffered its second major flood mid December 2005. Over 400 service members and family evacuated. In 2006, a newly installed protective berm prevented a nearly second consecutive year of flooding. When NATO took military intervention to Libya in 2011, NAS Sigonella played an important role in US Operation Odyssey Dawn because of its short distance to the country. As Libya remained unstable in 2013, a Special Purpose Marine Air Ground