Commemoration to the victims of the Iranian airliner shotdown

Today on July 3, 1988 the Iran Air Flight 655 "IR655", the plane an Airbus A300B2, was shot down by USS Vincennes on the fly from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. It resulted in the death of 290 civilian from six nations, including 66 children. There were 38 non-Iranians aboard.

The men of the Vincennes were all awarded combat-action ribbons. The Legion of Merit, the U.S. armed forces second highest award, was presented to Captain Rogers and Lieutenant Commander Lustig on 3 July 1988. Commander Lustig, the air-warfare coordinator, even won the navy's Commendation Medal.


I want to express my condolences to the families of the victims.

May their souls rest in peace

[edit on 3-7-2005 by Sep]

Oh, was this the plane that was flying away from the Americans when they shot it down?

Edit: Spelling

[edit on 3-7-2005 by KhieuSamphan]

I am sure our local rightwingers are having a little celebration - "290 down, 69 million to go".

Originally posted by xmotex
I am sure our local rightwingers are having a little celebration - "290 down, 69 million to go".

great you beat me to saying that

I was only 11 when this happened but heard some about it over the years. Does any1 have a link to the story?

Truly tragic.

Let them rest in peace....and let's hope something was learned from this.

Question - were the combat ribbons directly related to this action?

tia.

Here is a good account of the errors that led up to the disaster.

Lt. Col. David Evans, USMC, wrote it up for a ROTC class he was giving apparently. It throws a lot of light on the incident, which has been somewhat hushed up. It includes a lot of commentary by the captain of the USS Sides, a Perry class frigate that was also involved, who felt that Captain Rogers of the Vincennes was being overly agressive and violating his ROE. It also includes a counterpoint by Captain Rogers himself.

Here is the account as stated in the link provided so that people can understand what happened.

It is also doubtful that Captain Rezaian ever heard the warning messages broadcast by the Vincennes, or by the frigate USS Sides (FFG-14), about 18 miles from the cruiser. The two ships were broadcasting on military and international air distress frequencies, and during the busy climb-out phase of his flight, Captain Rezaian likely was monitoring the approach control frequency at Bandar Abbas, where he took off seven minutes before, and air traffic control at Tehran Center.

If he had been monitoring the distress frequencies, the American-educated Captain Rezaian, although fluent in English, might not have known that the warning transmissions were intended for him. Indeed, as the Navy's report to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) would later state, only one transmission made by the Sides, just 40 seconds prior to the Vincennes' missile launch, was clear enough that it could not have mistaken as being intended for another aircraft.
Besides, Captain Rezaian's Mode 111 transponder, the civilian equivalent of the military's "identification friend or foe" (IFF) electronics, was broadcasting the unique code of a commercial airliner."

Flying at a speed of about six miles per minute, the Iranian pilot had no way of knowing that moments earlier he had crossed the 20-mile point where Captain Will Rogers, the skipper of the Vincennes, had announced to his crew and to other U.S. naval elements in the area, that he would shoot if the Iranian aircraft did not change course. Captain Rezaian could not have guessed that by now his lumbering A-300 Airbus had been evaluated in the Vincennes as a diving Iranian F-14--the spearhead of a "coordinated attack" from the air from gunboats on the surface-and that Captain Rogers had given him an unspoken momentary reprieve by waiting until the airliner was 11 miles from the Vincennes before he authorized fning of the ship's SM-2 antiaircraft missiles.

And no one is celebrating this tragedy, it was just a horrific accident and not something else.

Yeah I agree that it was certainly an error, not an intentional attack.
The US had absolutely nothing to gain by shooting down a civilian airliner.

What's troubling is the stonewalling by the US after the fact, and the refusal to discipline a captain that was apparently ignoring his ROE and making up his own.

But I guess CYA is a universal imperative

BTW I belive the commendations given to the Vincennes' crew were for the battle with the gunboats, not for the airliner shootdown.

[edit on 7/3/05 by xmotex]