A bit of history: 3 July 1988: The Downing of Iranian Flight 655 by USS Vincennes

Email Me When A New Comment Is Made
Show Only Poster Name and Title Newest to Oldest

Pages: 1 2

DropBear RE:A bit of history: 3 July 1988: The Downing of Iranian Flight 655 by USS Vincennes 7/3/2006 11:37:02 PM

Interesting how the nickname for the Vincennes in USN service is "Robocruiser". Apparently other ships reckon it was a trigger happy ship. I saw a doco on it years ago and whilst engaging boghammers they were themselves warned off by a very prim and proper Pom from the Omani Navy. Seems Vincennes didn't bother recognising sovereign territorial waters. Tsk tsk tsk. You reap what you sow.

Quote Reply

Aussiegunnerreturns RE:A bit of history: 3 July 1988: The Downing of Iranian Flight 655 by USS Vincennes - TJ 7/4/2006 4:50:07 AM

TJ, 1. Whether or not you agree with the ship being in Iranian waters is really irrelevant to the central issue of the aircraft being shot down. The same thing could happen over international waters. In fact, if the ship was 4nm back it well still have. Personally, I don't see how anybody can believe that a defending force chasing gunboats that are attacking a neutral, civilian ship into the waters of the aggressor country is problematic. Destroying them before they can come back and kill more innocent merchant sailors is perfectly reasonable, IMO. 2. There was nothing wrong with the USN ROE's used on that day. The ROE's basically said that if an aircraft is adopting a posture that indicates that the threat to the USN or the ships it was escorting was imminant and cannot be identified as harmless, then shoot it down. That is perfectly reasonable. The problem was with the identification proceedure and supporting equipment(next point), not the ROE's. 3. There were problems with the identification proceedures and equipment, when it came to operating in a complex environment involving multiple threats and lots of mixed civilian/military traffic. However, you name a workplace where mistakes don't happen, then have to be corrected through experience? You can have the best proceedures and equipment in place in the theoretical sense, but only real practice will prove whether they work or not. For most people who don't work in jobs that involve human life that situation is not as disturbing. However, in jobs like the military learning on the job does cost lives and that sucks but it is inevitable. Those jobs also tend to be the ones that occur in a complex, unpredictable, rushed environment, which contributes a lot to the risks involved. For instance, he same principles applies in other areas where lives are at stake like acute healthcare where I work. It is increadibly disturbing when people are blindsided by a systemic error that costs a life, but you can do is your best and make sure you learn from it and don't repeat it. Had the USN fired a missile under such circumstances before and not learned the lesson, then I would have a harsher judgement(like I do of the US ground forces for forgetting about COIN from Vietnam, which has made the current problems in Iraq worse than they need be). However, in this situation they did the best they could and don't deserve to be blasted for it. 4. What was eminantly avoidable was the creation of a situation where the USN had do send ships to protect neutral merchant shipping in one of the most strategically vital waterways in the world. To put it bluntly, Iran shouldn't have indiscriminatly been hitting ships. They also added to the risk of one of civilian facilities by locating military aircraft on civilian facilities. So, the worst thing that anybody can accuse the USN of in this incident is not having a crystal ball, with which they can prepare themselves for all eventualities. However, the Iranians can be held directly accountable for acting maliciously in a way that led to a great loss of civilian life. It is the inability/unwillingness of people to make that distinction that makes me strongly suspect bias and I stand by my comments to that effect, whether you want to call them hyperbole or not.

Quote Reply

MustangFlyer RE:A bit of history: 3 July 1988: The Downing of Iranian Flight 655 by USS Vincennes - TJ 7/4/2006 5:44:50 AM

Well the Iraq's were doing that as well (actually I think they started doing it first), but we didn't do anything about it (oh the suppose we in the West did, we sold them the equipment to make WMD). Two, The Aegis system is the most sophisticated ship based radar system in the world. If it can't tell the difference between an Airbus climbing and a F-14 diving to attack then you have to question its effectiveness. Alternatively the system was good and the people using it were very poor.

Quote Reply

southern cross RE:A bit of history: 3 July 1988: The Downing of Iranian Flight 655 by USS Vincennes - TJ 7/4/2006 6:58:53 AM

I guess it's easy to sit safely in your study/den and judge over long minutes of thought, but the fact is the CO of the Cruiser didn't have that luxury, he had to make a life/death decision based on the information he had, and he has had to live with it ever since.

Quote Reply

tjkhan RE:A bit of history: 3 July 1988: The Downing of Iranian Flight 655 by USS Vincennes - TJ 7/4/2006 7:38:03 AM

southern cross: "I guess it's easy to sit safely in your study/den and judge over long minutes of thought, but the fact is the CO of the Cruiser didn't have that luxury, he had to make a life/death decision based on the information he had, and he has had to live with it ever since." With respect, you miss the point. Of course decisions have to be made, and naturally sometimes those decisions will be wrong...put simply, that's the life experience. My concerns are: 1) Notwithstanding what else is said, Vincennes was itself engaged in provocative actions. You could hardly expect the Iranians to sit back once Vincennes and Sides approached and then entered Iranian territorial waters. We all know that the Iranians were playing provocative games (in the context of the ongoing Iran-Iraq War), but the US knew where they were, and also that Bandar Abbas was a civilian, as well as military, airport. Knowing that, a missile was fired and it struck a civilian aircraft. 2) Irrespective of what decisions were made on the ship, the USN failed to set in place an appropriate set of ROEs for action in a busy air and seaway. 3) The decision to fire in this instance must be disguished from those instances when civilian casualties are incurred during a state of war between two combatant nations. In this case, America was not at war with Iran, and the ROEs did not appropriately reflected that situation. I recognise that this incident took place only a couple of months after Operation Praying Mantis however. 4) What would have happened if, having entered Iranian waters, Vincennes had either struck a mine or been struck by an Iranian silkworm missile. You can talk about "sitt(ting) safely in your study/den and judg(ing) over long minutes of thought" the actions of the CO, but the sad reality is, the actions of the Vincennes could have resulted in the equivalent of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. 4) You are correct when you say that the CO has to live with his decsion...the pilot, crew and passengers of flight 655 didn't have that opportunity. Let's face it, if the situation had been that the airline shot down was American, the response by the US administration would have been entirely different. The CO, within days, would have been relieved of his command and court martialled. I doubt you would have heard one word about "the fog of war". Similarly, if the ship that launched the missile had been Iranian, and the aircraft shot down had been American I doubt we would be having this discussion, what we would have been talking about is where and when the invasion took place. Or do you think I'm wrong there?

Quote Reply

Aussiegunnerreturns TJ - check your facts 7/4/2006 8:27:20 AM

"1) Notwithstanding what else is said, Vincennes was itself engaged in provocative actions. You could hardly expect the Iranians to sit back once Vincennes and Sides approached and then entered Iranian territorial waters." That is plain wrong. The Iranians were attacking a Pakistani tanker in international waters and the Vincennes only entered their waters to engage them in that act. The Vincennes did not provoke the engagement in any way, the Iranians did.

Quote Reply

tjkhan RE:TJ - check your facts 7/4/2006 8:33:06 AM

There is little point saying more. I've attempted to express my point of view, you plainly don't accept it...we'll just all move on....that is apart from those poor souls on Flight 655.

Quote Reply

Aussiegunnerreturns MF 7/4/2006 9:05:52 AM

"Well the Iraq's were doing that as well (actually I think they started doing it first), but we didn't do anything about it (oh the suppose we in the West did, we sold them the equipment to make WMD)." You are right in that both Iraq and Iran engaged in the tanker war against eachother's and neutral shipping. However, I'm pretty sure that the multi-national naval force based in the Gulf was there to protect ships from both of them. The US did undertake retaliatory raids for attacks on tankers against Iran whilst not doing so against Iraq. That was part of a wider effort on the part of the major Western powers and the Soviet Union to arm Iraq in its fight with Iran, because of fears that the Iranian revolution would spread. I know that this was hypocritical, but it really was just one of those sh1tty decisions that the governments of the day had to make. That is, pick the least worst option to beat(or at least keep distracted for 8 years) the most worst one and worry about the most worst one later. In fact, it directly parallel's backing Stalin's Soviet Union with Western arms and support against Hitler's Germany, only to have to deal with the former during the Cold War once the later was vanquished. I don't think anybody would seriously debate whether we should have done that... as distasteful as it was. At the end of the day the same sort of rotten decision had to be made with Iran and Iraq. It worked, because the Iranian revolution well and truely lost momentum over that time. It really comes down to what Southern Cross in his last post. We can all judge the decisions that were made from our in front of our computers, but I doubt that any of us have every had to make the sort of hard decisions that that ships captain or those world leaders had to make back then.

Quote Reply

Aussiegunnerreturns RE:MF - Typo 7/4/2006 9:08:17 AM

"That is, pick the least worst option to beat(or at least keep distracted for 8 years) the most worst one and worry about the most worst one later." Should have read, That is, pick the least worst option to beat(or at least keep distracted for 8 years) the most worst one and worry about the least worst one later.

Quote Reply

Aussiegunnerreturns RE:TJ - check your facts 7/4/2006 9:11:12 AM

"There is little point saying more. I've attempted to express my point of view, you plainly don't accept it...we'll just all move on...." I agree, which is incidentally why I restricted my last reply to merely correcting your factual error, instead of debating those aspects of your post that were "point of view".

Quote Reply

1 2