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Associated Press
Mourners carry coffins through the streets of Tehran, July 7, 1988, during a mass
funeral for victims who died in the Iran Air Flight 655 crash in the Persian Gulf. (AP)
Mourners carry coffins through the streets of Tehran, July 7, 1988, during a mass
funeral for victims who died in the Iran Air Flight 655 crash in the Persian Gulf. (AP)
On this Day: U.S. Navy Shoots Down Iran Air Passenger Flight
July 03, 2008 12:00 PM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
On July 3, 1988, the aircraft carrier USS Vincennes mistook a commercial jet for a hostile Iran f-14 fighter plane, shooting it down and killing 290 people.
Email This30-Second Summary
Iran Air flight 655 had just left Iran’s Bandar Abbas airport on what should have been a 28-minute flight to Dubai.
The Vincennes was in the midst of a firefight with small Iranian vessels when the crew noticed an unidentified mark on its radar.
The inexperienced crewmembers believed the aircraft’s flight pattern and speed matched that of an Iranian fighter descending at high speed toward the ship. The Navy said it attempted contactng Iran Flight 655 numerous times on civilian radio frequencies, never receiving a response.
The Vincennes fired, killing all 290 people on board the plane.
According to a subsequent review of data recorded by the “black box” monitor on the Vincennes’s control deck, the aircraft was actually ascending at high altitude, well within commercial airspace.
Some observers said memories of the slow American response to an Iraqi air attack on the USS Stark a year earlier, as well as the wartime environment of the Iran-Iraq war, may have induced panic in the crew.
Iran believed that the attack was deliberate, and many journalists suspected a U.S cover-up, speculating that the Navy, anxious for wartime action, had been overly aggressive.
President Ronald Reagan called the attack a “terrible tragedy” but never issued an apology, asserting that the Navy had acted defensively to a perceived serious threat, and saying responsibility lay with the continuing Iran-Iraq war.
The United States eventually paid compensation to victims’ families on an “ex gratia” basis, without claiming responsibility.
The Vincennes was in the midst of a firefight with small Iranian vessels when the crew noticed an unidentified mark on its radar.
The inexperienced crewmembers believed the aircraft’s flight pattern and speed matched that of an Iranian fighter descending at high speed toward the ship. The Navy said it attempted contactng Iran Flight 655 numerous times on civilian radio frequencies, never receiving a response.
The Vincennes fired, killing all 290 people on board the plane.
According to a subsequent review of data recorded by the “black box” monitor on the Vincennes’s control deck, the aircraft was actually ascending at high altitude, well within commercial airspace.
Some observers said memories of the slow American response to an Iraqi air attack on the USS Stark a year earlier, as well as the wartime environment of the Iran-Iraq war, may have induced panic in the crew.
Iran believed that the attack was deliberate, and many journalists suspected a U.S cover-up, speculating that the Navy, anxious for wartime action, had been overly aggressive.
President Ronald Reagan called the attack a “terrible tragedy” but never issued an apology, asserting that the Navy had acted defensively to a perceived serious threat, and saying responsibility lay with the continuing Iran-Iraq war.
The United States eventually paid compensation to victims’ families on an “ex gratia” basis, without claiming responsibility.
Headline Link: “Failure and Danger in the Gulf”
A July 6, 1988, New York Times article provides information on the events surrounding the Iran Air disaster, and places the event in the overall context of the Iran-Iraq war. “The evidence suggests that our aggressive patrolling strategy tends to start fights, not end them,” the Times commented. “We behave at times as if our objective was to goad Iran into a war with us, when our real objective is to get Iran and Iraq to stop fighting.”
Source: The New York Times (free registration may be required)
Background: The Iran-Iraq war; attack on the USS Stark
The attack on Flight 655 occurred during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq. The war broke out over both nations’ claims to the oil-rich area along their shared border. The exact number of casualties is unclear but it is estimated that 1 to 2 million people died as a result of the conflict.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
U.S. Navy vessels were stationed in international waters in the Persian Gulf in order to prevent Iran from destroying Kuwaiti and Saudi oil vessels. Time magazine published an article on June 8, 1987, recounting that “Iranians have attacked 29 ships in the gulf, 25 of them serving Kuwait.”
Source: Time
Approximately a year prior to the Vincennes incident, in 1987, a rogue Iraqi fighter launched two missiles at the USS Stark, killing more than 30 sailors, reports NavyBook.com The two Exocet missiles attacking the Stark came from an Iraqi Mirage F1 fighter. The attack was unprovoked, the Stark was not expecting an attack and thus did not take defensive measures. The Stark was struck by the first of two missiles as it attempted to contact the Iraqi fighter via radio to issue a warning. The Navy’s failure to defend itself against a quickly approaching and unidentifiable aircraft may have had an impact on the decisions of the Vincennes’s commanders.
Source: NavyBook.com
Reactions: U.S. defends its actions
Citing recent attacks, the U.S. government made it clear that there was an imminent threat of attack on the U.S. Navy. The Navy had been involved in firefights with small vessels during the course of the day and said it repeatedly sent out warnings to Iran Air Flight 655 on its approach. According to the Navy, only after other alternatives were exhausted did the Vincennes crew justifiably act in self-defense to what it perceived to be a threat during a time of war. The U.S. Department of State released a bulletin in 1988 saying that the blame “for this tragic incident and for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of other innocent victims as a result of the Iran-Iraq war, lies with those who refuse to end the conflict.”
Source: BNet
Analysis: Who was at fault?
After the Vincennes shot down Iran Air 655, an investigation was launched to determine the causes of the tragedy. The Navy feared criticism of its new, state-of-the-art AEGIS defense system. Instead, according to a Time magazine article from Aug. 15, 1988, blame was placed on the “overwrought sailors on the Vincennes [who] misread the radar data about the oncoming Airbus and passed faulty information to Captain Will Rogers III.”
Source: Time
A July 13, 1992, Newsweek article placed blame for the Iran Air tragedy on American overagressiveness and incompetence. Newsweek described what it called the aggressive policies of the USS Vincennes under its captain, William Rogers, saying that Rogers “had never been under fire, [and] longed to see action.” The article also speculates that the crew was incompetent and experienced “scenario fulfillment,” a phenomenon in which soldiers under stress carry out a training situation that is not actually occurring. “Not only did the Navy commit a crime of incompetence, but it attempted a grand cover up of the incident,” Newsweek commented, saying that the Navy was responsible for “misleading the public on what happened and not apologizing.”
Source: Newsweek
Later Developments: U.S. pays compensation, U.S.-Iranian relations today
The U.S. agreed to pay millions of dollars in compensation to the families of the dead Iranians. “The White House said that compensation for the Iran Air victims would be made ‘ex gratia,’ a term of international law meaning voluntarily and without admitting fault or legal liability. Responsibility for the incident lies with ‘those who refuse to end the conflict’ in the Persian Gulf, particularly Iran, the White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, told reporters.”
Source: The New York Times (free registration may be required)
Reuters provides some details on U.S.-Iranian relations from the Shah’s rise to power in 1953 to Iran’s present-day nuclear ambitions.
Source: Reuters
Related Topic: AEGIS missile system
“The Aegis system was designed as a total weapon system, from detection to kill. The heart of the system is an advanced, automatic detect and track, multi-function phased-array radar, the AN/SPY-1. This high powered (four megawatt) radar is able to perform search, track and missile guidance functions simultaneously with a track capacity of over 100 targets.”
Source: U.S. Navy
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