Word: airbuses
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Captain Will C. Rogers III ordered two missiles launched at the Airbus, a Navy board of inquiry concluded, for two reasons only: the plane was heading directly toward his ship in a combat situation, and it had not responded to twelve radio demands that it identify itself. Thus it had to be considered hostile. In a 53-page unclassified version of a 1,000-page report, the Pentagon admitted that the Iranian aircraft was not descending toward the Vincennes or emitting military identifying signals, as the Navy originally claimed...
...report cites "stress, task fixation and unconscious distortion of data" by the crew as likely causes. Whatever the IFF signal, Crowe said, Rogers would not have relied on it alone, since Iranian military aircraft have been known to use Mode III to hide their identity. The report said the Airbus was not using its normal weather radar, which would have conclusively identified it as civilian...
Several critical technical questions remain unanswered. The air control tower at Bandar Abbas had been talking regularly by radio to the Airbus, but the Navy did not explain why the Vincennes failed to monitor these communications. Shipboard commercial-flight schedules showed that Iran Air Flight 655 should be in the air about this time, but nobody reacted when an officer standing behind Rogers in the CIC raised the possibility that the oncoming airplane was a commercial flight...
...about the shootdown shortly after it occurred on July 3. Crowe announced that the Aegis system had tracked the incoming "hostile" aircraft as traveling at 520 m.p.h., flying at 7,500 ft. and descending in a threatening path toward the U.S. warship. But the Aegis data reportedly showed the Airbus flying at about 400 m.p.h. at 12,000 ft. and climbing...
...combat on the Vincennes' sailors led to the misreadings, Fogarty's investigation concluded. The cruiser had been on Persian Gulf duty only since late May, and its crew got its first taste of battle the morning of July 3. The ship had just skirmished with Iranian gunboats when the Airbus was spotted, and all hands were already on alert because of intelligence warnings of a possible Iranian terrorist attack over the July 4 weekend. According to the Washington Post, agitated crew members even fumbled the complex firing sequence several times before launching the missiles...