Shooting down of Iran Air 655 (Pt 2 of 3)

Video Statistics and Information

Video

Captions Word Cloud

Captions

it was our concern however that that Vincennes was acting in an overly aggressive fashion or so it seemed and that they were actually pursuing these boats rather than being pursued by them the IRGC were sort of a ragamuffin band if you will I mean they were they were not very well coordinated and certainly it wouldn't be too difficult to scare them I don't think into doing something that was foolhardy if they saw a lot of military machinery bearing down on them that could easily become frightening it was our business out there to defend shipping against those guys but not to provoke them it was hammered home to us that that we were the neutrals that we were in a very difficult position that that restraint was there but if that if you needed to have the use of the rules of engagement so be it there they were there for you to protect yourself and your crews in support of the Vincennes fighters were launched from a nearby carrier enormous firepower to deal with lightly armed speedboats they look like you're closing one appears to be gonna have to start from ones in the middle machine gun three five zeros inbound refine zero relative relative still inbound [Music] taking track we're not sure the Montgomery also opened fire [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] during that engagement with the small boats the aircraft lifts off from bond robust and then proceeds on course essentially slightly off schedule as has been noted I think they were 20 minutes or so behind schedule climbing on a fixed course using the proper iff and so forth and so on every aircraft broadcasts its own unique identity by transmitting an electronic squawk code iff identification Friend or Foe the Airbus continually broadcast its civilian status the aircraft was proceeding on a course that would take it directly over the Vincennes position recall again that Vincennes was in the middle of a gun battle with these small boats now perhaps a battle of its own making but firing nonetheless the Vincennes till carried on firing though they were well inside Iranian territorial waters the Airbus was now 24 kilometres along the regular air route to Dubai it had already been wrongly identified as hostile the Vincennes believed it to be an Iranian f-14 fighter you are inundated with intelligence messages projecting the worst case scenario possible every day of the week such that if anything happened whatsoever they could go back to the file and pull out a warning that said well we've warned them about that but life in the Gulf was business as usual commerce continued airliners continued to fly back and forth if you allowed yourself to focus solely on those intelligence reports without going up on deck walking around and looking at the reality of life in the Persian Gulf you could become quite paranoid about threats that didn't exist but there had already been official concern that tensions might affect military judgment when I briefed in with with the commander of the Mideast force I know that a very serious concern of his as a matter of fact he said dick the one thing that I am concerned about is shooting down a civilian aircraft if Captain Rogers believed it was a military aircraft and if he believed as we think he did that it was part of a coordinated effort at that point a coordinated attack then then in his mind he could see this as a threat at this point the Vincennes had already issued the Airbus three warnings two of these could not be received by the civilian airliner as they were broadcast on military frequencies and the third warning did not identify the aircraft as it failed to use any iff squawk code I was told that it was an f-14 I watched it I took a look at its altitude and its speed it was climbing it was slow it was in the middle of our missile envelope the f-14 to my knowledge had no significant anti-surface warfare capability so I designated this thing in my own mind as a non threat Captain Rogers on the other hand involved with his gun battle at that time announces that he is intent on taking that aircraft out at 20 miles it got tense it did make the situation much more complicated both ships had attempted to communicate with the aircraft and we were unsuccessful we got no response back we could hear the challenges go out on military air distress and this civilian version where the air distressed channels so we were aware that they were warning an aircraft an approaching aircraft typically if you could not communicate with an Iranian airplane military aircraft you illuminated them with your fire control radar you let them know that you were there and they would generally depart the area when we illuminated it with our fire control radar it didn't react the American fighters launched earlier could have identified the airliner as a civilian flight but the carrier commander would not allow them to approach the area fearing they might be shot down by an overeager Vincennes I did not have the capability to talk directly to the commanding officer of Vincennes simply because he was engaged on a very personal basis in a fight and I knew they were about ready to pull the trigger on a missile that could kill my pilots and I wanted to make absolutely certain that they didn't become the victim for truth 21 miles the aircraft crosses the 20-mile mark and he doesn't shoot it down 18 so at that point I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that ah okay he has now seen that it is a non threat but I'm told transpired during that period of time afterwards is that they weren't capable of getting the shot off in an orderly fashion so although the intent was to shoot it down at 20 miles they sort of bungled the operation while the surface battle continued the crew below struggled to fire their missiles before the aircraft came so close that a successful launch would be impossible 27 unsuccessful attempts were made before the correct launch code was entered [Music] you created an uproar on the ship which was quickly quieted down the Vincennes continued to pound the bog hammers we had individuals who were up in places where they could see wreckage fall I could see the airplane coming down it wasn't until sometime later that they described the wreckage in terms that led us to believe that it was not a military aircraft there was too much too large and over the emergency frequency they heard a desperate Iranian appeal shot down an Iranian airliner but critically while in Iranian waters please look for survivors or wreckage I can just only recollect the Nepal has settled over the entire force when it started to become apparent that this was an airliner that was involved it was just a sickening feeling for the entire rest of the day I can't ever remember being so dismayed so depressed so feeling for all of the people that were involved it wasn't it wasn't a very happy day in the Gulf for us that's for sure the sides was dispatched to go close to the to Dubai to see if they could find wreckage and they spent a considerable amount of time there was nothing there and it's also fairly ironic that the Vincennes is the one that came upon the wreckage this was hardly surprising as the Airbus and it's dead were an Iranian waters only a few kilometers from where the Vincennes had shot it down it was the middle of the night when the news was sent to Washington a time difference of 7 hours with the Gulf the shoot-down was a major incident with enormous diplomatic implications and so the Navy had to prepare itself for a rough ride Admiral William Crowell chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was sent out to face the press after receiving further data and evaluating information available from the Persian Gulf we believe that the cruiser USS Vincennes while actively engaged with threatening Iranian surface units and protecting itself from what was concluded to be a hostile aircraft shot down an Iranian airliner over the Straits of Hormuz the US government deeply regrets the sense of it given the threatening flight profile and the decreasing range the aircraft was declared hostile Vincennes prior to the standard surface-to-air missiles at least one which range six-month Admiral Crowl presented the facts as the Vincennes had reported claiming the aircraft had been diving in an attack mode outside its correct air lane and that it had not responded to any warnings this was the story that the world and America first heard United States Navy of the US Central Command within a day the Pentagon knew it had another problem the version of the incident reported to them by the USS sides it's climbing it's slow it doesn't respond it's in the middle of the our missile envelope basically it's vulnerable why would this aircraft present a threat it did not meet any of the threat parameters that were necessary for

Info

Channel: BoilerRoom4

Views: 62,036

Rating: 4.6153846 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 50sYFs6p7lk

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2012

Reddit Comments