Ако някой е чел за ирано - американските отношения след революцията, нямаше да се налага да обяснявам подробно. Инцидентът е дълго раздуван от западните и иранските медии, и за запознатите с историята просто няма начин да не се сетят и да не им хрумне поне асоциация.
Това че крайцерът е бил в международни или ирански води, когато сваля пътническия самолет, ни най-малко няма отношение към вината на офицерите, които са били в бойния команден център. Може само да утежни отговорността им, ако са били в ирански води, или няма отношение, ако са били в международни. Но дори да са били
, това не би оправдало убийството на почти триста невинни цивилни. И изобщо защо се поставя въпросът? Да не би злополучният ЗРК Тор да е бил в иракска или сирийска територия? Нещо ми се губи тук логиката. Ако иранския разчет на Тор е бил в международни води (по някакъв начин) това как би се отразило на отговорността им? Пак са убийци на невинни цивилни. САЩ оправдаха некадърния оператор и агресивния командир с мотива, че било напечено, че ирански лодки в района дразнели търговски кораб, че се налагало да се намесят, че изодзадзе на пътническия самолет летели ирански военни аероплани и техните военни транспондери засенчили цивилния транспондер на Iran Air.
После имаше критики, включително много в самия САЩ, на действията и на разследването и резултатите му. Както казах, изкараха едва ли не иранците виновни, при същите тъпи грешки на операторите и същите нещастни обстоятелства - самолетът излита със закъснение, решават, че не се вдига, а се снишава, наоколо е напечено, защото има военни действия.
Капитанът на "Винсенес" уж беше заплашван, уж имаше опит за покушение. Вярвам, че ако иранците се бяха заели да го очистят наистина, нямаше да му се размине. Ако изобщо са били те, целта е била да го сплашат.
" - има я качена в Avax, и сигурно още доста сайтове. А не да се обяснявам какво е общото в двата инцидента - като за хора, които се "
P.S. Понеже ме ядосахте, ще сложа относимите глави на книгата тук:
► Show Spoiler
The Iranian expatriate owner of the “Hormuz” supermarket in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, stopped by the nearby Iran Air office on the morning of July 3, 1988 to deliver bottled water and soft drinks. The man had eleven family members, including eight children, due in on a short 20-minute Iran Air flight crossing the Strait of Hormuz from Bandar Abbas. When he got to the Iran Air office, the store owner discovered the staff intently monitoring news of an air crash. The earth suddenly seemed to yawn open beneath his feet, plunging him into an abyss of unbearable horror. A U.S. Navy warship had shot down Iran Air flight 655, the plane carrying his family. All aboard were dead. The wretched man began violently banging his head on a post. Said a witness, “He has lost his mind.”1
Dawn on Sunday, July 3, had found three U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz or its vicinity. The frigate USS Sides (FFG 14) was heading into the Strait for an east-to-west transit into the Gulf after completing an outbound escort mission. The frigate USS Elmer Montgomery (FF 1082) was patrolling the northern portion of the strait. The Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes (CG 49) was proceeding through the Strait en route to Bahrain for the Fourth of July holiday.
At 6:30 A.M., the Elmer Montgomery spotted seven Iranian speedboats approaching a Pakistani merchant vessel, the Sarghoda. The Montgomery could see that the Iranian boat crews had manned their machine gun mounts and their rocket launchers. It looked like they were getting ready to attack the ship. The number of Iranian boats grew to around thirteen before they split into three groups. One of the groups took a position off the Montgomery’s port quarter. On board the Vincennes, Captain Rogers was shaving in his sea cabin when the Combat Information Center (CIC) watch officer buzzed him on the phone and told him, “Skipper, you better come down. It looks like the Montgomery has her nose in a beehive.”2 The Vincennes immediately cranked up to flank speed. It headed to the area to support the Montgomery at 30 knots, then 32 knots. However, the Iranian boats the Montgomery was keeping an eye on didn’t seem to be taking any kind of aggressive action. The Montgomery’s situation did not appear quite as serious as initially thought, and the Vincennes slowed to normal speed within a few minutes of starting out to support the frigate.
A little after 7:00 A.M., the Montgomery heard the IRGC boats challenging merchant ships over bridge-to-bridge radio. The U.S. ship also heard five to seven explosions to the north. The explosions might have indicated that the IRGC boats were shooting up a merchant ship. However, Montgomery didn’t pick up any distress calls from a ship reporting it was under attack. The Commander of Destroyer Squadron
25 (DESRON 25), Captain Richard McKenna, was the operational commander for U.S. surface forces in the Gulf. He was monitoring the situation from onboard the USS John Hancock (DD 981), some 325 miles away at Sitrah anchorage in Bahrain. Captain McKenna, who had the call sign “Gulf Sierra” (GS), ordered the Vincennes to send its helicopter to investigate what was going on with the Iranian boats. He also told Vincennes itself to proceed to the general area of the Montgomery, but to hold out of the immediate vicinity. The Vincennes again cranked up to 30 knots and manned its small arms stations for possible surface action.
The Vincennes helicopter, call sign “Oceanlord 25,” had been on routine morning patrol since shortly after sunrise. It headed to the area north of the Montgomery so it could monitor the activity of the small IRGC gunboats. Captain Rogers said he wanted the helicopter crew not to approach closer than four miles to the Iranian boats. “We didn’t want to appear provocative,” he later said.3 When Overlord 25 got to the area, it reported that the gunboats were harassing a German merchant ship, the Dahulagiri. The boats were not actually attacking the ship, but were threateningly circling around it. From the John Hancock, Captain McKenna ordered the Vincennes to have its helicopter keep the Iranian boats under observation. Aside from a possible attack on a merchant ship, Captain McKenna apparently wanted to keep an eye on the Iranian boats in connection with the upcoming transit of the USS Sides through the Strait and into the Gulf. Oceanlord 25 carried a surface search radar and could relay its radar picture to other ships over the naval data link, so they could see what its radar saw.
At 8:18 A.M., Captain Rogers sounded General Quarters on the Vincennes as the ship continued to head at high speed toward the Montgomery. Before the Vincennes could get to the frigate’s location, an Omani patrol boat appeared and ordered the Iranian boats circling the Dahulagiri to clear the area. The Iranians complied, breaking off their harassment of the merchant ship. The Omanis also reprimanded the Vincennes for cutting through their territorial waters at high speed, and requested that it leave them. About a half hour later, the Vincennes sailed past the German ship, which flashed an “A-OK” signal, and pulled alongside the Montgomery.4
Captain McKenna had wanted Vincennes to keep out of the immediate area, and was now reportedly startled to discover that the cruiser had gone well north of where it was supposed to be. He ordered it back south. Captain Rogers replied, “You want me to do what?” Captain McKenna was reportedly furious and muttered, “Aegis arrogance.”5 The Vincennes slowed to 15 knots, and at 8:46 A.M., the cruiser requested, and was granted, the authority to resume its transit to Bahrain.
The Vincennes’ helicopter, Oceanlord 25, was still observing the Iranian boats. It was orbiting at low speed and at an altitude of 1,200 feet. The U.S. Rules of Engagement prohibited the helicopter from flying closer than four miles to the Iranian boats. Piloted by Lieutenant Mark Collier and commanded by Lieutenant Roger Huff, the chopper nevertheless closed to within two to three miles of the small Iranian craft. Apparently that was too close for the Iranians. At 9:15 A.M., as the helicopter was making a port turn, a burst of tracer bullets whipped by 100 yards in front of it.
Lieutenant Collier radioed to the Vincennes, “Trinity Sword, this is Oceanlord two-five. We’re taking fire…. Executing evasion, clearing!” Captain Rogers asked the helicopter to confirm it had taken hostile fire and if anyone had been hurt. The helicopter reported no injuries and confirmed “eight… ten rounds… airbursts, returning!”6 Captain Rogers ordered the helicopter back and told the bridge to close at best speed. He contacted JTFME command, and ordered general quarters sounded. For the third time in less than three hours the Vincennes cranked up to full power and charged north at 30 knots.
The Vincennes covered at least 10 miles at high speed heading toward the Iranian boats. Now, she could see two groups of them some seven to eight miles away. DESRON 25 Commodore McKenna directed the Vincennes to take tactical control of the Montgomery. Captain Rogers positioned that ship 8,000 yards off the Vincennes’ port quarter. Rogers also radioed the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, sailing some two hundred miles away in the deep water of the Arabian Sea, to launch its alert aircraft. A Surface Combat Air Patrol (SUCAP) “package” consisting of two F-14 fighters, one A-7E Corsair II, and one A-6E Intruder strike aircraft began catapulting off of the carrier’s flight deck. They were followed by an E-2C Hawkeye radar surveillance aircraft.
With what looked like trouble in the offing, Captain McKenna also ordered the Sides to proceed at maximum speed to the area. Admiral Less directed the Vincennes to take tactical control of the Sides in addition to the Montgomery. The Vincennes’ helicopter, Oceanlord 25, flew back near to the ship at high speed. When the Vincennes and the Montgomery sailed together into the vicinity of the Iranian boats, they saw that there were two groups of Boghammers. One group was about four miles away. The Vincennes’ 25mm light automatic cannon kept them covered, although the boats were outside of the guns’ range.
The two large 5-inch guns on the Vincennes were “centerlined,” as opposed to tracking the boats, so that the big cruiser did not display an overtly threatening appearance. However, fire control targeting solutions were developed for the guns. Five of the six Iranian boats in the southernmost group headed away from the American ships, toward the entrance to the strait. The sixth drifted down the starboard side of the Vincennes. It carried on its bow what was described as a recoilless rifle (more likely a rocket launcher), which was not manned. The boat’s crew appeared to be relaxed and slouching around. Most of the other group of Boghammers had retreated from international waters into nearby Iranian territorial waters, but several turned toward the Vincennes and the Montgomery.
The U.S. ships were still heading toward the Iranian craft, and, at 9:37 A.M., the Vincennes crossed into the Iranian declared war zone. The Boghammers had been swirling around in the haze about three or four nautical miles away. The small craft were difficult to track with sensors, but at least two appeared to turn, increase speed, and head toward the Vincennes. The commanding officer of the Montgomery saw the boats head toward the Vincennes at what he estimated to be a speed of 20–30 knots. Lookouts on the Vincennes reported that Boghammers were closing on the ship. Captain Rogers later said, “Just as I was about to clear the area, three of the northerly group reversed course and commenced closing Vincennes and Montgomery at approximately 17 knots.”7
At 9:39 A.M., the Vincennes requested permission from McKenna and Admiral Less (whose instructions were being relayed through Captain Watkins) to open fire with its 5-inch guns. Admiral Less asked the Vincennes to verify that the boats were not leaving the area. The Vincennes answered that the boats were closing and increasing speed. At 9:41 A.M., came the approval: “Take Boghammer group with guns. I say again, take Boghammer group with guns.”8 A sonar man on watch heard what sounded like bullets ricocheting off the hull of the ship. Lookouts reported to the bridge that the Boghammers were firing at the Vincennes. Lookouts on the Montgomery reported small arms fire from the boats.
The two 5-inch guns on the Vincennes and the single 5-inch gun on the Montgomery opened up on the Iranian small boats. Captain Rogers said that the first round fired by the Vincennes exploded above a gunboat and destroyed it.9 Guns firing, the U.S. warships continued forward toward the Iranian boats.
Some 50 miles away, on the Iranian mainland, Iran Air Flight 655 was sitting on the tarmac at Bandar Abbas airport. It had been scheduled to depart at 9:20 A.M. for a short hop across the Gulf to Dubai, but had been delayed. The plane was an Airbus, a jet with a 300-passenger capacity. During the stop in Bandar Abbas, the crew of 16 remained on board the jetliner. Two hundred and forty seven passengers walked across the field from the Bandar Abbas terminal to board the plane. Many were lugging cheap suitcases, which they anticipated filling up with purchases in Dubai. Some were shoppers, others small businessmen looking to stock up on inventory. Iranians often packed weekend flights from Iran to Dubai in order to buy low-priced electronic goods and jewelry—items often unavailable in wartime Iran. Other passengers were Iranian expatriates who lived in the UAE and were returning after going to Iran on business or to visit relatives.
The pilot, Captain Mohsen Rezaian, went through his preflight checklist before taking off. Captain Rezaian, 38 years old, had been trained by Boeing, and for a while had lived in the United States. He had married an Iran Air stewardess in a “modern,” i.e. unarranged, marriage. The couple had three young daughters, one of whom had been born in Oklahoma. Because of the worsening conditions in Iran, Captain Rezaian had sent his family to live in West Germany.
Air Traffic Control (ATC) centers in Iran were notified through a “red alert” procedure when military activities posed a risk to civilian aircraft. When a “red alert” was in effect, the ATCs would not give clearance to civil aircraft to fly through the affected airspace. There was a shootout now taking place between the Vincennes and the Iranian gunboats, but Iranian authorities had issued no “red alert.” It is unclear whether the small boats had not reported the surface action or if they had been unable to contact their command ashore. Iran Air Flight 655 was given take-off clearance by the Bandar Abbas tower, which radioed, “Have a nice flight.”
At 9:47 A.M., having been delayed 20 minutes due to an immigration problem involving a passenger, Iran Air Flight 655 took off from runway 21 and began climbing straight ahead en route to Dubai. Almost immediately thereafter, the AN/SPY-IA AEGIS radar system on the Vincennes picked up a contact, which had taken off from the combined military and civilian airfield at Bandar Abbas, some 47 miles away from the ship. The unusually long-range radar detection of the low altitude contact was due to the favorable atmospheric conditions present at the time.
When the air contact first appeared, based on the fact that the takeoff coincided with the surface action, the Vincennes Tactical Information Coordinator, Petty Officer John Leach, called out “Possible Padre” (Iranian F-4 Phantom fighter) over the anti-air warfare communications net. However, using an identification friend-or-foe (IFF) interrogator, the Vincennes picked up the contact “squawking” a Mode III IFF signal of the type assigned to civilian traffic. As the contact flew past the Iranian coastline and over the Gulf, the Vincennes assigned it Track Number (TN) 4474 and reported it to other ships over the Navy data link. USS Sides also picked up the contact squawking the civilian Mode III IFF signal.
The identification supervisor (IDS) on the Vincennes, Petty Officer Richard Anderson interrogated the incoming contact with a UPX-29 IFF system, which was separate from the ship’s Aegis system. Using his remote control indicator (RCI), Anderson had initially picked up the Mode III response, a normal civil aircraft transponder code. However, Anderson “hit” the contact again, and this time he picked up a military Mode II-1100 code from the same line of bearing (direction relative to the ship). The only radar contact on that bearing was TN 4474. Anderson then consulted a list of IFF codes kept at his console, ones that had been picked up from aircraft by the Vincennes or other U.S. warships. He saw that an Iranian F-14 fighter flying out of Bandar Abbas had used Mode II-1100 about two weeks before.
Anderson got on the Vincennes internal communications net and warned “all stations” that TN 4474 was squawking a Mode II IFF signal and “breaks as an F-14.”10 Anderson also called out loud, off the net, to the ship’s Tactical Action Officer (TAO) to make sure he heard the report. Anderson told the Tactical Information Coordinator (TIC), Petty Officer John Leach: “I have a Mode II, 1100 on that track which also correlates to an F-14.” Leach called out the identification “Astro” (Iranian F-14), based on Anderson’s IFF response and on what he thought was a similar identification that had been called out by the ship’s intelligence section. Anderson thought he heard the intelligence section say, “That track is possibly an F-14.” The “intelligence section” was the ship’s Signals Exploitation Space (SSES), which was physically separated from the CIC. It collected and evaluated signals intelligence on a real-time basis. The Petty Officer who supervised the SSES later denied making any such call. However, several CIC crewmen were under the impression that the F-14 identification had come from that source.
The USS Sides had assigned track number TN 4131 to the approaching contact that had taken off from Bandar Abbas. The Sides had assigned its track number slightly after the Vincennes had assigned TN 4474 to the same contact. The Sides did not correlate the two tracks and reported TN 4131 over the net. The more sophisticated Vincennes system did correlate the two track numbers, recognized that they were duplicates and, as first to correlate, dropped its own track number in favor of TN 4131. On the Vincennes, the contact now showed up as TN4131. At his console on the Vincennes, Petty Officer Anderson consulted a commercial air schedule, provided via the Fleet Intel Center, to see if TN 4131 corresponded to any scheduled civilian flight out of Bandar Abbas. Because Iran Air was running 27 minutes late, the contact didn’t seem to correspond to any of the scheduled flights on the list.
On board the Sides, Commander Carlson was standing between his Tactical Action Officer and his Weapons Control Officer. He asked about the contact, “Do we have it?” “Yes, Sir, we’ve got skin, it’s a good contact,” was the reply. (That is, the Sides’ search radar signal was being reflected back by the metal “skin” of the air contact.) Commander Carlson observed that the contact was at around 3,000 feet in altitude, running 350 knots. He asked his ESM (electronic support measures) talker if the contact was putting out any electronic (radar) emissions. “No, sir, she’s cold nose. Nothin’ on her,” was the reply.11 (That is, the nose-mounted radar on the aircraft was not sending out a signal.)
The Vincennes was also keeping a close eye on another air contact. This one was an Iranian P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft flying some 64 miles to the west of the ship. The Vincennes Military Air Distress (MAD) operator challenged the P-3 on the MAD frequency (243 Mhz), requesting that the Iranian “Papa Three” state its intentions and that it keep clear of the U.S. warship. The Iranian P-3 responded to the U.S. challenge stating, “Our intention is search mission… we keep clear of your unit.” The Vincennes told the P-3 to stay 50 miles away from it.
Lieutenant Clay Zocher, the Vincennes’ ship anti-air warfare coordinator, ordered the radio operators to challenge TN 4131 over the Military Air Distress (MAD) and International Air Distress (IAD) frequencies. At 9:49 A.M., the Vincennes issued its first warning to the contact over the MAD frequency, using the call sign “unidentified Iranian aircraft.” The Vincennes gave the course, speed and altitude of the aircraft and requested that it state its intention. As a civilian aircraft, Iran Air 655 did not carry a radio capable of being tuned to the 243 Mhz MAD frequency, and the Vincennes received no reply.
The Vincennes’ International Air Distress (IAD) operator next challenged the aircraft over the IAD frequency (121.5 Mhz). Using the call sign “unidentified aircraft,” the operator gave the speed and course of the contact, and warned that if it maintained its current course it would be steering into danger. The Vincennes’ operator requested the contact to immediately change to a different course. The Airbus had two VHF radios aboard; both were capable of picking up the 121.5 MHz IAD frequency. In September 1986, Iran Air had issued a notice to flight crews operating in the Gulf area, requiring them to monitor frequency 121.5 at all times. Iran Air 655 had been in contact with the Bandar Abbas tower and Tehran ATC over one of its two VHF radios on other channels, but there was no response to the Vincennes challenge on IAD.
It was now 9:50 A.M. The Vincennes was still hotly engaged in the ongoing surface action against the Iranian speedboats. Iran Air 655 was some 34 miles away from the cruiser, climbing to 6,000 feet and still heading directly toward it. The identification supervisor on the Vincennes had seen both Mode III (Civilian) and Mode II (Military) IFF “squawks” from TN 4131. Multiple personnel in the CIC, including the officer standing behind Rogers, Lieutenant William Montfort, also heard an IFF Mode II, or F-14, call over the internal communication net. However, the Aegis system was recording no Mode II military signal, only a Mode III civilian signal. Although a long distance away, the Iranian P-3 aircraft now turned inbound toward the Vincennes. It was around this time that the Vincennes’ forward 5-inch gun mount went out of action, its bore fouled with a round stuck in it. The cruiser still had one big gun that was functioning. Captain Rogers anxiously ordered the Tactical Action Officer, Lieutenant Commander Vic Guillory, to “Bring that aft gun to bear now!”12
Sitting next to Captain Rogers in the Vincennes CIC, Lieutenant Commander Scott Lustig was acting in the dual roles of Vincennes anti-air warfare officer and force anti-air warfare. That is, he was coordinating the air defense of the other U.S. ships in the area, as well as being responsible for the air defense of his own ship. He was also communicating information on the surface action to the JTFME. Lieutenant Commander Lustig reported to the JTFME flagship that the Vincennes had an inbound F-14 that was ignoring radioed challenges. The Vincennes Own Ship Display Assistant (OSDA) had tagged TN 4131 as an F-14 on the AEGIS large-screen display, a 42-inch-square screen.
The display did not show the altitude of the “F-14,” but it did show that it was headed directly toward the Vincennes. The Vincennes’ MAD frequency radio operator issued another challenge and another request for a course change to “Iranian aircraft” over the MAD frequency that Iran Air 655 could not receive. Iran Air 655 was now some 28 miles from the Vincennes. Lieutenant Commander Lustig, believing that TN4131 was an Iranian F-14, indicated his intention to engage it at a 20nautical-mile range unless it turned away. Lustig asked Admiral Less over the radio for his concurrence. Admiral Less agreed, but ordered the Vincennes to warn the aircraft again before firing. Lieutenant Zocher ordered the radio operators to issue continuous challenges to TN 4131 until the Vincennes engaged it.
On the USS Sides, Captain Carlson was thunderstruck when he heard Vincennes announce its intention to shoot down the contact at 20 miles. He said to the people around him, “Why, what the hell is he doing?” Carlson had accepted the F-14 identification of the contact, but saw it now climbing past 7,000 feet and did not consider it a threat. In his mind, he said, “Maybe I’m not looking at this right. You know, he’s got this Aegis cruiser. He’s got an intelligence team aboard. He must know something I don’t know.”13
At this time, the Vincennes’ Tactical Action Officer, Lieutenant Commander Vic Guillory, was sharply maneuvering the ship, using 30 degrees rudder, in order to bring the functioning aft 5-inch gun to bear on the Iranian small boats. Although it slowed from 30 knots to around 17 knots to turn, the ship heeled way over as it did so. In the CIC, the high speed maneuvering caused books, publications, and loose equipment to fall from desks and consoles as the crew dealt simultaneously with the Iranian small boats and the incoming air contact. The large screen displays in the darkened CIC flickered as the gun fired. Around this time, the Vincennes crossed into Iranian territorial waters in the vicinity of Hengam Island. The Vincennes issued additional warnings on the Military Air Distress and the International Air Distress frequencies.
The Iranian airliner was climbing through 7,000 feet altitude and squawking the Mode III commercial signal. USS Sides had the commercial signal and was reading the correct altitude. Two operators on the Sides evaluated TN 4131 track as a commercial “Haj,” or pilgrimage flight. Standing behind Rogers was Lieutenant William Montfort, the Combat Information Officer. Montfort observed TN 4131 slowly climbing between 8,000–9,000 feet inside the commercial air corridor and said, “Possible COMAIR” (i.e. commercial flight) to Rogers and Lustig. Captain Rogers acknowledged the statement by raising his hand.
The other U.S. Navy warship engaged in the surface action against the Iranian small boats, USS Elmer Montgomery, wasn’t able to pick up the approaching unidentified air contact on its own radar. USS Sides did have radar contact. Although the contact was crossing with respect to the Sides, Commander Carlson ordered a missile fire control radar to illuminate the aircraft. Iranian fighters were equipped with radar warning receivers which could detect a fire control radar locking on and alert the pilot. A radar lock-on would usually be expected to precipitate some sort of response, often an abrupt course or altitude change. Civilian aircraft did not carry radar-warning receivers and hence would be unaware of a radar lock-on. The Sides locked its fire control radar on TN 4131. There was no reaction from the aircraft.
The Vincennes continued to challenge the incoming track. Another warning was read out to “Iranian aircraft, fighter” on the Military Air Distress frequency that Flight 655 could not receive. The Vincennes anti-air warfare coordinator, Lieutenant Zocher, requested and received permission to illuminate TN 4131 with a fire control radar as it approached a range of 20 miles. The International Air Distress (IAD) operator issued yet another warning to “unidentified aircraft” on the IAD frequency that Flight 655 could receive, but which it was apparently not monitoring. Yet another MAD frequency warning was read out to “Iranian F-14.”
It was 9:53 A.M. The Iran Air Flight 655 was climbing through 10,500 feet to 11,230 feet altitude and was 16 nautical miles away from the Vincennes. It was still heading toward the ship. The Aegis cruiser could pick up no radar signal from the contact on its SLQ-32 electronic support measures (ESM) system. A radar signal put out by the aircraft could have been correlated to signals in the ESM system’s library and would have pointed to the aircraft’s identity.
The Airbus carried a weather/navigation radar whose signals the SLQ-32 could pick up and identify. However, the aircraft was flying “cold nose,” with no signal from its forward mounted radar. Apparently the flight crew had seen no need to turn it on, given the favorable weather conditions prevailing for the short hop across the Gulf. Accordingly, neither the Vincennes, the Montgomery, nor the Sides had been able to detect any electronic emissions from TN 4131. Rogers asked the operators again to verify that there were no electronic emissions from the contact. “Negative, negative, Captain. We’ve got nothing!” was the reply.14 The IAD operator on the Vincennes was preparing to give another warning when the Sides issued a challenge to TN 4131 on the IAD frequency, addressed to “unidentified aircraft” and requesting a course change.
In the USS Sides CIC, there was growing excitement and shouting about “Comair” from two enlisted console operators, who thought the aircraft was a twice-a-week commercial “haj” flight. The CIC officer walked over and told them to “shut up.” The Sides’ CO, Commander Carlson, was not aware of the ruckus the two CIC crewmen were kicking up about “Comair.” He thought that TN 4131 was an F-14 fighter, but not a threat. When he had verbally evaluated it as a “non-threat” to his ship, Carlton’s TAO had given him a quizzical look. Carlson had explained his reasoning: The contact’s course would not take it on a “closest point of approach” (CPA) to the Sides which would make it a danger; it was identified as an F-14 air-to-air fighter which lacked anti-surface warfare capability; it lacked any radar emissions which correlated with a military aircraft; and its relatively high altitude did not fit with the flight profile of a ship attack. “He’s climbing. He’s slow. I don’t see any radar emissions. He’s in the middle of a commercial envelope, and there is no precedent for any kind of attack by an F-14 against surface ships. So, non-threat,” reckoned Commander Carlson.15
The Vincennes MAD operator issued another warning on the military frequency. Turning from the surface battle to the air contact, Captain Rogers asked, “What is 4474 doing?” Flight 655 was still climbing, which is exactly what the Aegis system showed. Up until 9:52 A.M., the altitude information on the contact being passed to Captain Rogers had been accurate. Now, according to later recollections, ominous reports of descending altitude were beginning to come over the internal net as the contact continued to head directly toward the Vincennes. Petty Officer Leach, the TIC, was interjecting reports on the ship’s command communication circuit every time he had the opportunity to do so. As he later put it, “taking every open shot” so as to make sure they were staying informed, “[not] getting too sidetracked by the surface engagement where they were forgetting about the guy coming in.” As the contact continued to close, he was reported to have been yelling out loud.16
Commander Lustig, who was running the air engagement, subject to Captain Rogers ultimate control, passed the reports of descending altitude and increasing speed to Captain Rogers without correlating the track on his Large Scale Display “picture” to a small digital (numerical) display in front of him, which showed Flight 655 climbing. Lustig also passed on, as a fact, a report that the incoming aircraft had veered from its flight path into an “attack profile.” In contrast to what was being reported to Captain Rogers, the Airbus was still climbing past 12,000 feet.
At 9:54 A.M., the blue-and-white-colored jetliner was 12 nautical miles from the Vincennes, flying a mile off the centerline of a 10-mile wide commercial air corridor called “Amber 59.” The Vincennes Missile System Supervisor (MSS) asked for and received confirmation from Lieutenant Zocher on the “take” order for the incoming aircraft. Commander Lustig hit the assign Standard missile button, which sent the order to the Missile System Supervisor, who then hit the firing authorize button. With the air contact now at a 10 nautical mile range, the system took over, initialized the missiles, and fired. A Standard antiaircraft missile streaked into the sky, followed shortly by a second one. At that moment, Bandar Abbas took a position call from Flight 655, told it to contact Tehran Control, and to “have a nice flight.” The Airbus replied, “Thank you, good day.”
With both missiles in the air and heading to their target, the MAD operator issued a final challenge to “Iranian aircraft,” requesting an immediate change in course. It was still possible to destroy the missiles in flight if the target responded. It did not. Some twenty seconds after launch, the first anti-aircraft missile exploded close below the airliner, between the wing and the tail. The second missile rapidly followed. Shrapnel sprayed an engine and the aft fuselage. The exploding missile warheads blew off the left wing and the tail.
The Commanding Officer of the USS Montgomery was on the bridge of his ship. He saw the flash of impact, and then saw the Airbus descending toward the sea in a rapid, flat spin with one wing and the tail missing. The jet crew and many of the passengers would have been still belted into their seats as the missiles exploded near the airliner. However, airlines in the Middle East were notorious for their poor seatbelt discipline. There were probably a fair number of passengers who had unbuckled immediately after takeoff. A few may have been killed or injured as shrapnel sprayed the aft fuselage. The unbelted passengers were probably sucked out of the now tailless aircraft through the open aft fuselage.
For the majority, the world must have tilted downward with a sickening lurch and whirled around and around as the stricken jet started to break up and spin toward the Gulf, some 12,000 feet below. It took little more than a horror-filled minute before the Airbus impacted the surface of the water, about six and a half miles east of Hengham Island. The airliner hit with tremendous velocity, killing everyone onboard. Aboard the USS Sides, Combat Information Center personnel shouted, “He shot down COMAIR!”17
The USS Sides itself came close to shooting down another Iranian aircraft. This one had departed Bandar Abbas at 9:56 A.M., flying the same course as the plane just shot down by the Vincennes. The USS Sides reported its missile fire control radar was locked on the approaching target and she intended to shoot it down.18 However, based on the contact’s slow speed and constant climb, the JTFME flag plot on board the USS Coronado in Bahrain evaluated the aircraft as either a P-3 or a commercial airliner. Captain Watkins told the Sides to hold its “weapons tight.” Eventually, the contact turned away to the northwest. It was later identified as an Iranian military C-130 transport flying to Lavan Island.
The battle against the gunboats was winding down. Only two could still be seen on the Vincennes radar; the rest had either been sunk or had withdrawn out of range. At 10:03 A.M., the cruiser’s still-functioning aft gun ceased firing. The ship had fired a total of 72 5-inch rounds at the Iranian boats. The Montgomery continued to fire for a while longer. A few minutes later it reported a “confirmed kill” on one of the small boats. At 10:19 A.M., the Vincennes reported to the JTFME that it had shot down an Iranian F-14 fighter. A minute later, two more inbound air contacts were picked up at a range of 43 nautical miles. These were Iranian F-4 fighters that, at first, flew toward the Vincennes. They tried to lock their nose-mounted fire control radars on the U.S. warship. The Vincennes used its electronic warfare system to jam their radars and broke several Iranian attempts to lock on the ship. The Vincennes had been withdrawing slightly to the south, and, at 10:32 A.M., it exited the Iranian-declared war zone.
Iranian search and rescue units were starting to arrive in the vicinity, but they didn’t have the crash location of the fallen Airbus. Numerous small Iranian boats and tugs joined in the search effort over the next several hours. Sometime during this period, the Vincennes picked up Iranian radio calls over bridge-to-bridge VHF, accusing the U.S. of shooting down a passenger aircraft and threatening that “we are ready to answer for your actions.”19
Admiral Less had received a report that an Iranian airliner was overdue at Dubai, and the awful truth was starting to dawn. As Captain Rogers would recount in his book, “Over the next hour and a half reports of a continuing search for an overdue civilian carrier continued to filter in. We had launched two missiles, and there was an aircraft missing. It was painful but not difficult for me to put the facts together.”20 Around mid-afternoon, Captain Rogers drafted a message to Admiral Less recapping the events of the day. It closed with the statement, “I and I alone am fully responsible for the actions of the Vincennes.” 21
In Dubai, dozens of distraught and sometimes frantic relatives and friends of those onboard the flight gathered at the airport clamoring for information. Iran Air officials laboriously compiled a handwritten passenger manifesto and passed out copies. Only when they saw the names on the list did the people anxiously waiting in Dubai know at last the fate of their loved ones. The blows fell with an enormous weight on some. Eleven members of one family were lost, ten of another. A young Indian doctor living in Iran lost six relatives. A Gulf Air employee in Dubai lost four brothers.22 The Pakistani naval attaché, his wife and two daughters, had also been on board.
Abdul Amam Hassanpoor, an Iranian Coast Guard officer in Bandar Abbas, set out with several colleagues in a small boat to recover bodies at the crash site. He found some split open and others torn apart, either by the missile blast or crash impact. Unable to pull the bodies aboard, the crew tied a dozen together with rope and towed them to a large Navy recovery vessel. Pictures of the grotesque scene, with the gaggle of mostly naked bodies floating behind the boat went around the world. “For three days, I was sick, believe,” said Hassanpoor. “It was a horrible picture. The men and women, they are no neck, no head. What can I say?”23
The mostly intact forward fuselage of the Airbus sank rapidly but probably retained some buoyancy. It appears to have drifted away from the original crash site. The Iranians searched only that location and never could find it. The fuselage held the bodies of the majority of the passengers and the flight data recorders. What the searchers did find were the severed wing and tail sections and some smaller debris. It is likely that most of the bodies recovered were those of unbelted passengers who had been pulled out of the plane as it descended. Their loose Middle Eastern clothing was probably stripped away by the rushing air-stream as they fell from altitude, which was why many of the bodies were found floating nude.
The U.S. public got its first official word on the tragic event from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe. He held a hastily convened press conference on the afternoon of July 3. Admiral Crowe expressed the U.S. government’s deep regret over the incident and then gave a rundown on the sequence of events. He stated that the airliner was four to five miles outside of its prescribed air corridor, that it was traveling at high speed, that it had been sent numerous warnings, and that it had been descending in altitude. Admiral Crowe stated that, based on the information the local commanders had available, they had sufficient reasons to believe their units were in jeopardy and that they had fired in self defense. Asked if this was an accident waiting to happen, Admiral Crowe replied, “If a country is going to wage combat operations in a certain area and then send a commercial airliner into the area during that, of course it’s an accident waiting to happen.”24
Based on the information available to them at the time, the American people overwhelmingly concluded that the Vincennes was justified in shooting down the Iranian airliner. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed in a Washington Post-ABC News Poll thought that the captain of the Vincennes was justified in taking the action he did, while 23 percent did not. Seventy-four percent of those surveyed thought Iran was more to blame for the incident than the U.S., while 14 percent thought the U.S. was more to blame. The incident triggered a “rally around the boys in the Gulf” reaction, with a two-thirds majority approving of the way President Reagan was “handling the situation involving the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf.”25
As it turned out, most of the major elements in the account given by Admiral Crowe were wrong. However, public reaction was strongly influenced by the initial version of events, which dominated the news in the critical first days after the action. The delayed release of the facts, a kind of trickle-down truth, helped attenuate the shock. Another factor present in the initial U.S. public reaction was the reduced level of sympathy toward the victims, which was an unfortunate by-product of the strong and continued animosity held by most of the U.S. public toward Iran. This hostility apparently created a psychological distance from the victims which insulated many Americans from the raw impact of the human tragedy caused by the shoot-down. A British newspaper reporter gave a Greek-American doorman in New York the news that 290 civilians had been killed when a U.S. warship had shot down an airliner. Dismayed, the doorman replied, “That’s terrible. Where were they from?” Iran, came the reply. “Oh, well it’s not so bad,” said the doorman.26 In fact, most Americans did feel badly over the loss of life, but it cannot be denied that their response was tempered by the fact that it had been an Iranian plane that had been shot down.
Administration strategy for handling the tragedy was to apologize for what happened, calling it unavoidable under the circumstances, but to continue on with business as usual. Congressional reaction varied, with many members calling on the administration to “review” its overall policy in the Gulf. However, public and bi-partisan Congressional support for that policy had steadily been growing, a trend that was not reversed by the Iran Air tragedy. Accordingly, there was little incentive for the administration to rethink its policy, much less abandon it.
In an effort to maximize the world’s exposure to the tragedy and to further embarrass the U.S., Iran swiftly granted visas to journalists requesting permission to travel to the country. In Bandar Abbas, the recovered bodies of victims were displayed in a refrigerated produce warehouse being used as a makeshift morgue. Those previously identified lay in wooden coffins. Those still awaiting identification were in plastic body bags, which were opened for viewing by reporters and for filming by TV cameras.
The Bandar Abbas airport manager, who lost some members of his own family on the Airbus, bitterly told reporters, “When you see those dead bodies, you will see the human rights that Reagan insists on.”27 Some of the recovered bodies were dismembered, and grisly body parts were also displayed. Others seemed almost lifelike. One coffin held a three-year old girl wearing a green dress and white pinafore. Two bright gold bangles were on her arm, and her feet were still in white socks and tiny black shoes. Her equally small brother lay next to her. One young mother lay clutching her baby, forever frozen in a last embrace. “We found them together, so they must stay together,” said an Iranian official.28
Nobody knew what Iran’s reaction to the tragedy would be, but many braced for a possible rampage of terrorist revenge attacks. In a message broadcast over Tehran radio, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s designated successor, took a hard line position in favor of violent retaliation. He urged Khomeini to order “revolutionary forces and resistance cells inside and outside the country to target America’s material, political, economic and military interests.”29 Iranian president Ali Khameini wrote to heads of state that Iran had the “right to avenge the blood” of the victims of the attack, and was quoted as calling President Reagan and his administration “criminals and murderers.”30
The more moderate or pragmatic approach was, as usual, advocated by Parliament Speaker Rafsanjani. The latter had been working to reduce Iran’s isolation by improving its relations with other countries, and was generally seen as trying to steer it toward an end to the war with Iraq. The U.S. shoot-down of Iran Air 655 might have been a serious setback to Rafsanjani’s efforts, strengthening the hand of the more radical factions in the internal tug of war over the direction of Iranian policy. Though in truth, Iran’s maneuvering room was limited. Conventional military attacks on U.S. forces had virtually no prospect of success. Terrorist strikes would inevitably bring heavy U.S. retaliation, adding to the woes of a nation suffering from increasing economic distress and one grown weary of a war in which the tide was turning against them. There was no explosion of popular demand for revenge. Most Iranians appeared to have been more shocked and bewildered than angry. “The people are hurt, but they’re not hysterical,” said a Western businessman living in Iran.31
Ayatollah Khomeini finally made clear the direction of Iran’s response in a radio broadcast in which he responded to Montazeri’s call for violent action by advising the latter to go along with Rafsanjani’s more moderate position.
President Reagan had expressed his “deep regret” over the loss of life in a five-paragraph note delivered to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran on the day of the tragedy. On July 11, President Reagan announced that the U.S. would pay compensation to the families of the 290 people killed on Iran Air flight 655. In the words of a White House spokesman, the president was “personally saddened at the tragic death of the innocent” and had decided to offer compensation in keeping with “the humanitarian traditions of our nation.”32 The administration said that the payments would be made directly to the individuals and not to the government of Iran. The payments were described as “ex gratia”—purely a gesture by the offering country and implying no admission of guilt. As to assigning blame for the tragedy, that would depend a great deal on the outcome of a massive investigation getting underway in Bahrain.
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