USS Vincennes and IranAir

[Thanas]

I have been trying to find some info on it. The wikipedia page is somewhat contradictory - it has one US captain say that it was all the fault of Captain Rogers due to being an over-aggressive idiot. Then again the US awarded him a medal for his conduct during his ToD, so I don't know how much credit to put into hearsay reports.

So does anybody here know exactly who messed up here and who is at fault?

[Lonestar]

I DO I DO I DO.

It was a comedy of errors.

That morning the Vincennes helicopter took fire from some boghammers(while in International waters), and reported back to the Vincennes which promptly went a-hunting. In the course of this CG49 entered Iranian territorial waters and saw something heading toward them. Here is where it gets a bit murky.

.gov has since claimed that the Vincennes thought it was a F-14. Malarky. I have heard from a reliable source(guy who was on the ship at the time, at his GQ station. He heard more RUMINT later on,as he wasnt in CIC) that there was a disagreement, some thought it was P-3 or something similar. Given the events that morning the assumption was that someone was coming either to attack the Vincennes or to act as a spotter for someone else. .gov reported that it was thought to be a F-14 later on, perhaps because a P-3 at first or second glance doesn't look a whole hell of a lot like a Airbus. Or so I would assume, I wasn't a OS.

(and, without getting into why I would know, the Iranians fly their P-3 very low, don't deviate from their daily patrol pattern much, and try to look with the mark one eyeball rather than using radar. The airbus when shot down wouldn't be doing any of those things)

Insert usual cavaets about "this is a sea story, take with grain of salt" etc.

[Sea Skimmer]

The helicopter only took fire after it was launched to find some Iranian gunboats that had just attacked another US warship, that bit is important. The real problem seemingly was the AEGIS system changed track numbers without clearly deconflicting notifying the operators when data from other ships radar. Everything else was kind of secondary, and had the computer been allowed to handle the air picture automatically it never would have fired. The airliner track number was switched to another plane that was military IFF and descending. Investigations never undercovered who exactly said what on the track numbers, but concluded Rodgers acted within his rules of engagement, but on false information. I've heard it claimed they had to turn hard to unmask the aft gun just before they fired on the airliner and that nobody was concentrating well at the time as well, no idea on the truth of this.

The only P-3 bit I've heard was that the ship had been watched by an Iranian P-3 for a while just before this all occurred, making the crew think they were being targeted the whole day.

As for the medals, he got two. One was a combat service ribbon everyone serving in the gulf combat zone got automatically. The other was a Legion of Merit awarded two years later, after an investigation had cleared him of formal wrongdoing, for two years of service in command of the cruiser. The Legion of Merit is handed out pretty freely to both US and foreign officers, make of it what you want.

On the over aggressive bit, that's usually said because he left his station without orders, was ordered to go back, but then that order was countermanded and he was given approval to go engage the Iranians so it would seem someone did agree with him afterall. This coming after two US warships were nearly sunk in the past year, the worst damage in both cases any US warship had taken since Korea, including Stark which had correctly identified her attacker but not fired out of caution and its no surprise the crew and captain defaulted to aggression. All the more so because it had been shown already that aggressive USN actions were causing the Iranians to reduce the rate of attacks on neutral and US ships.

I really wonder why exactly it is people make such and endless deal about one big US mistake shooting down a civilian plane, and almost never is much said about how many hundreds of civilians were killed and wounded on all the neutral merchant ships Iran deliberately attacked hundreds upon hundreds of times. Well, actually I know the reason, but its just fascinating to see how little focus it ever gets.

[JointStrikeFighter]

There is an excellent episode of air crash investigation dealing with this incident.

[Elfdart]

I really wonder why exactly it is people make such and endless deal about one big US mistake shooting down a civilian plane, and almost never is much said about how many hundreds of civilians were killed and wounded on all the neutral merchant ships Iran deliberately attacked hundreds upon hundreds of times. Well, actually I know the reason, but its just fascinating to see how little focus it ever gets.

It might have something to do with the fact that merchant shipping is a legitimate military target while civilian airliners are not. There was also a legitimate reason the Iranians tried to stop Iraq and the Gulf States from shipping oil, like the fact that the profits from the sale of that oil were being used to buy weapons -including the nerve gas Saddam Hussein was using in the war.

[Lonestar]

In fact, the US has previously made the argument that neutral merchant shipping is not a "legitimate military target".

[Sea Skimmer]

It might have something to do with the fact that merchant shipping is a legitimate military target while civilian airliners are not.

Neutral merchant shipping sailing between neutral nations is not a legitimate target. Civilian airliners actually are legitimate targets if they attempt to breach enforced aerial blockades, though that was of course not the case in this instance.

There was also a legitimate reason the Iranians tried to stop Iraq and the Gulf States from shipping oil, like the fact that the profits from the sale of that oil were being used to buy weapons -including the nerve gas Saddam Hussein was using in the war.

Sure Iran had its reasons, but when you go and massively expand a war for whatever reason you might have, you take serious risks to do so and this does not excuse attacking neutral traffic which is not attempting to breach a blockade.