It took four years for the US to admit officially that the USS Vincennes was in Iranian waters

[NNN0LHI]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/3/newsid_4678000/4678707.stm

1988: US warship shoots down Iranian airliner

An American naval warship patrolling in the Persian Gulf has shot down an Iranian passenger jet after apparently mistaking it for an F-14 fighter.

All those on board the airliner - almost 300 people - are believed dead.

The plane, an Airbus A300, was making a routine flight from Bandar Abbas, in Iran, to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. snip

The plane blew up six miles from the Vincennes, the wreckage falling in Iranian territorial waters. snip

President Reagan said the Vincennes had taken "a proper defensive action" and called the incident an "understandable accident", although he said he regretted the loss of life. snip

The US government has never admitted responsibility or apologised for the tragedy.

[htuttle]

1. The captain got an medal for that, too

Poppy Bush gave him the Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989."

[Thothmes]

26. got a medal

Well over half of the Captains I served with got LOMs at the end of their tours. Most of them worded similar to the above. This guys career was zeroed out because of he screwed up,the selection board recognized that fact.

[htuttle]

27. Yah -- he really did a 'heckava job'

[Ezlivin]

2. We had to wait until "all the science was in"

As Bush has counseled us on many occassions, we simply have to wait and all the answers will appear.

I think he has science mixed up with the Magic 8 Ball. He probably came into his freshman science classes hungover once too many times.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. " Regrettable incident. An investigation is underway. We'll get back to you in a few years."

Coverup? Naaaah...our government would never to stoop to such tactics.

[Toots]

4. I don't find any such admission in my reading of the article

It said the plane fell into Iranian waters six miles away from the Vincennes, it did not say the Vincennes was in Iranian waters. :shrug:

[Solo_in_MD]

6. Quite correct, it was not in Iranian waters in any of the data released nor

was it claimed to be in them at the time by Iran

[NNN0LHI]

11. Where they were and what they were up to is explained here

http://www.answers.com/topic/iran-iraq-war

<snip>In the course of these escorts by the U.S. Navy, the cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 with the loss of all 290 passengers and crew on July 3 1988. The American government claimed that the airliner had been mistaken for an Iranian F-14 Tomcat, and that the Vincennes was operating in international waters at the time and feared that it was under attack. The Iranians, however, maintain that the Vincennes was in fact in Iranian territorial waters, and that the Iranian passenger jet was turning away and increasing altitude after take-off. U.S. Admiral William J. Crowe also admitted on Nightline that the Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters when it launched the missiles. . The U.S. eventually paid compensation for the incident, but never apologized.

According to an investigation conducted by ABC News' Nightline, decoys were set during the war by the US Navy inside the Persian Gulf to lure out the Iranian gunboats and destroy them, and at the time USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian airline, it was performing such an operation.

[NNN0LHI]

8. In the box to the right of the article

>>>It took four years for the US administration to admit officially that the USS Vincennes was in Iranian waters when the skirmish took place with the Iranian gunboats.<<<


from the article:

>>>Less than an hour before the shooting down of the passenger jet, he added, the Vincennes was engaged in a gun battle with three Iranian gunboats after a helicopter from the Vincennes was fired on.<<<

It needs to be pieced together.

Don

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

5. I have been on an A300...

I don't pretend to be an expert on radar, but how could an F-14 be indistinguishable from an A300?

The A300 is massive, and I would imagine a whole lot slower!

[Solo_in_MD]

7. The circumstances were unusual and tragic

With the exception of the tin foil crowd on the net and the hard core in Iran, no one beleives at this point it was intentional. IIRC, some procedual changes were implements by ICAO and elsewhere to help stop them from happening in the future.

[mitchtv]

15. unusual and tragic

More like Careless and incompetent, but I don't believe it was deliberate

[JackRiddler]

24. It doesn't have to be deliberate to be criminal.

Why was the US government involved in the Iran-Iraq war? Why was it arming both sides?

How is this different from the Soviets shooting down KAL 007? (Wrong example, it occurs to me. The Soviets mistook it for an incursion on their own airspace. They didn't dispatch warships to Argentina and engage the Argentine navy before shooting down an airliner "by mistake.")

[krispos42]

10. IIRC, there were F-14s in the area

The cruiser was tracking one and lost it, then the A300 appeared in the same spot. I think it was decending on a landing approach as well.

The whole thing sounded fishy on both sides. Airliners have transponders, but Iranian air control should have been able to warn the plane away from the combat area.

[Jonathan50]

14. You are mistaken

The plane, an Airbus A300, was making a routine flight from Bandar Abbas, in Iran, to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

The plane would have been climing, not descending at that point close to the coast of Iran.

Note the locations of Bandar Abbas and Dubai on the map below.

[krispos42]

17. Oh, they use a different spelling. "Dubayy"

Took me a couple of minutes to find it.

Hmmm... the Wikipedia article about this is most informative.

It appears that there was an error in tracking numbers between the three Navy ships in the firefight that day. One frigate assigned the tracking code "4131" to the Iranian Airbus. When the Vincennes picked up the Airbus, it was assigned code "4474" for a period of time until the computer (or the CIC crew) realized that the two traces were the same aircraft. Then the cruiser re-assigned code "4474" to a US Navy A-6 Intruder picked up on a decending course on the edges of radar coverage. The cruiser's CIC crew apparently split on this issue, some of them tracking the correct "4131" aircraft and reporting it ascending and others reporting that the "4474" aircraft was decending. Presumebly, the captain (who was apparently such a hothead that a regional US airbase commander would not assign cover aircraft to the Vincennes because he was afraid the ship's captain would shoot them down) was looking at trace "4131" and hearing flight information for flight "4474", which was now referring to a military aircraft on a decending flight path.

It is also noted that the Gulf region has 4 times zones and the Airbus left late. The crew either missed the flight on the roster of civilian air routes and schedules, or did not make the connection due to the delayed flight and time-zone confusion. Apparently, the CIC is very dark.

It is also claimed by the Navy that our ships did not have sufficient ability to talk to the civilian air band except on the international emergency freqency of 121.5 MHz, nor monitored civilian air-traffic broadcasts. I personally find that claim a bit doubtful. I mean, these ships do have electronic-warfare suites, right?!?!?!?

Apparently the Vincennes was trying to warn off a non-existant Iranian military aircraft on the military emergency channel of 243.0 MHz. It wasn't until one of the US frigates, which was tracking the correct aircraft with the correct information, realized that there was confusion and got on the civilian emergency frequency to warn the plane off. The airliner did turn away, but the cruiser fired anyway.

I'm not vindicating anybody here. This was during the time that the Iranians were raiding oil tankers with speedboats and RPGs, and we were trying to stop them. The cruiser had been in a firefight all day, pursuing Iranian small craft all over the area. Yet is seemed that there were factors such as poor training and lack of coordination combining with battle-lust and a hotheaded captain.

I did a report on this in high school, before all the information in the early '90s came out. I don't think most of this information was available to me at the time.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x128303

[Jonathan50]

20. It boggles the mind that such a hothead would be put in command

Of such a powerful weapon of war.

Just incredible.


"Presumebly, the captain (who was apparently such a hothead that a regional US airbase commander would not assign cover aircraft to the Vincennes because he was afraid the ship's captain would shoot them down) was looking at trace "4131" and hearing flight information for flight "4474", which was now referring to a military aircraft on a decending flight path."

[krispos42]

21. Fighter-pilot temperment on a defensive ship

Not a good idea, neccessarily. The primary job of the Tico-cruisers was fleet air defense and battle management. Single-unit stuff I would think they would not be as adapted nor practiced for as much as their primary mission.

Not that I mind him being agressive pursuing small, hard-to-track motorboats that are shooting up civilian ships with RPGs and fifty-caliber machine guns, but there's a hell of a difference between that and engaging an aircraft with missiles. Especially when the crew is getting things confused. Supposedly it took the officer in charge of firing the missiles 23 tries before an enlisted crewman reached over and hit the right switches to fire the SAM!

[Jonathan50]

22. Boggle!!!!

"Supposedly it took the officer in charge of firing the missiles 23 tries before an enlisted crewman reached over and hit the right switches to fire the SAM!"

So not only was the captain a hothead he was incompetent as well. No competent CO would allow an officer so inept to control a weapon so powerful.

Where did you hear that, by the way?

[krispos42]

23. It was in the Wikipedia article under "Potential Factors"

It was, however, a known fact that many of the senior officers on board the Vincennes knew very little about computerized warfare. The tactical officer for surface warfare, Lt Cmdr Guillory, knew so little that he routinely used his computer screens as a surface for sticky notes instead. Petty Officer Anderson, who missed Flight 655 on the schedule because it was so dark, also later claimed that he confused by the gulf’s four different time zones, something proper training could have easily helped with. Lt Clay Zocher was the boss of Air Alley, which was responsible for air warfare, but he had only stood watch at that post twice before and had never fully learned and mastered the console routines. In fact, when he was finally given the green light to fire upon the incoming aircraft, he pressed the wrong keys 23 times, until a veteran petty officer leaned over and hit the right ones. Nerves were shattered, and the training seemed nonexistent."

It is sourced to a 2004 MIT magazine article.

[Jonathan50]

25. When I was in the Corps, they trained us until every action was done on instinct

You didn't have to think about what to do next, your training took over.

The captain should have been court martialed.

[malaise]

9. I never forgot that day

Reminded me of the bombing of Cubana in 1975.

[puerco-bellies]

12. I'v e tracked Iranian F-14's and commercial jets in that area.

I was an Operations Specialist on a guided missile destroyer during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. All those planes "squawk" IFF (identification friend or foe) with numeric codes that we can use to identify what kind, and even which aircraft we have on our radar screens. The guys on that ship failed to properly ID the inbound AC. The TAO (tactical action officer) ignored the fact that the speed and angle of attack was not indicative of an attacking tomcat. The combat information center watch officer failed to note that the inbound AC was not emitting fire control radar emissions. The failure is squarely the fault of the captain, the TAO, and the CIC watch officer.

[Laughing Mirror]

13. Like most amnesiac Americans I'd forgot that not-too-distant terrorist attack in Iranian waters

So I'm grateful to have my memory refreshed. Thanks NNHOLHI for remembering and posting this. It certainly provides insight into understanding the recent incident in those waters. I would imagine Reagan's proud "human error" downing of the Airbus is seared more deeply into the collective memory of the Iranian people than it is the British or the American.

[krispos42]

19. Hell, they issued a stamp about it!

Issued about a month afterwards!

[vogonity]

16. And I will never forget this quote re: Vincennes from GHWB:

I will never apologize for the United States, I don't care what the facts are.

From memory so I removed the quotes on the unlikely chance I misremembered.

[krispos42]

18. "I will never apologize for the United States of America—I don’t care what the facts are"

According to Newsweek

Wow, like father like son, eh?