Just recently wondering what the actual intent of the plane was?  After the WTC, it creates a completely different realm of possibilities.  It is completely possible that it could have been intended to crash into the ship that shot it down.  Another issue, I saw a news report that was showing an Iraqi spy ship in the Persian Gulf.  They said it reports the location of U.S. military and assists ships in smuggling.  Why not go ahead and pluck that thing out of the Gulf?

It was Iranian not Iraqi

It was an Iranian 747 shot down by the USS Vincennes.  They thought they were tracking an Iranian F14 (like any of them are still flying).

Anyway, the bodies showed up on the news - naked, bloated and floating.  There was some concern that the bodies were planted there, but nothing ever came of it.

It was an Iranian plane full of passengers. I doubt it was any different than what they claimed.

Yeah, the US has not greater Right than any other country to gather intelligence, or keep other counrties from gathering information than any other country. Just look at all the people on this web-site that are still in a tizzy about the USS Liberty.

Or the war we got involved in when N Vietnam allegedly attacked our spy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Or that little incident where our spy plane got hit by a Chinese MIG. The US would certainly and rightfully claim that we are well within our rights to fly our planes whenever, wherever we want for wahtever reason in international territory.

Airbus A300 , not 747

Ok, we have established the airplane to have been Iranian and not Iraqi... can we now blow that ship out of the water... can we.. pls.. pretty pls...

Iranian, Iraqi, whatever, where did the flight originate from?  What year was this?  I thought it was coming from Iraq.  Anyway, I remember "we" were told the plane had an abnormal deviation in its flight path and had directed itself at the U.S. ship.  If it did originate in Iraq, do you think they would not martyr unknowing Iraqis and/or Iranians to sink a U.S. ship?  

Yes, every country can gather information.  However, if we are preparing for war, and they are leaving an obvious target that could potentially put U.S. forces in even more danger, I say blast it.

[Ed McMahon] "You are correct, sir!" [/Ed McMahon}

I was relying on my fading memories and failed to perform the required research.  

11 years ago, I seem to recall some uncertainty, but there was a more reasonable possiblity of Iranian F-14's flying than now.

On July 3, 1988, USS VINCENNES (CG 49), an AEGIS cruiser, shot down Iran Air flight 655, killing all 290 persons onboard.  That aircraft had departed Bandar Abbas, a joint civilian/military airfield in Iran and was on its way to Dubai.  Most of the passengers were pilgrims on their way to Mecca for the Hajj.  Flight 655 flew this route twice a week, along the standard civilian air corridor.

At the time of the surface to air engagement, VINCENNES was actively engaging several Iranian fast patrol boats operated by the Iranian Pasderan Revolutionary Guards.  CO VINCENNES had earlier decided to engage the boats with his 5" guns after the boats apparently began firing at his embarked SH-60B LAMPS helicopter then flying nearby.  The combat information center in VINCENNES was VERY busy during this period.  Many mistakes were made by VINCENNES personnel that led up to the firing of two STANDARD missiles.

Subsequent to the shootdown, many operational procedures were changed to improve situational awareness and extensive training was conducted Fleet wide to lessen the chances of this happening again.

This incident occured at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, when ships were being regularly attacked in the Persian Gulf by both sides.

One year before, USS STARK (FFG 37) had been attacked by an Iraqi Mirage F-1EQ5 fighter-bomber with two French made AM-39 Exocet anti-ship missiles.  Thirty seven American sailors were killed in that attack.  The CO of STARK was subsequently relieved for cause for not having his ship in the proper state of combat readiness in a known combat zone.  The Rules of Engagement then in effect at that time were also found to be ambiguous and were changed.  The word went out that we would NOT suffer the first blow again.

(At the time of both incidents, I was a Navy surface warfare officer on active duty.)

There's a LOT more if you want it...but it can be a long read.

Good information.  Kinda sheds a little more light on the subject.  I was 18 at the time and don't remember all the details.  Do you have a link to more information?

No, the incident was a major boner.  Civilian airliner CLIMBING, not descending like an attacking aircraft would. The Iranians thought it was intentional, as they had been conducting a lot of hit-and-run raids against international shipping in the Persian Gulf that the US was trying to stop (which was why the USS Vincennes and the USS Stark which the Iraqis hit with an Exocet missile in 1987, were in such a dangerous place to begin with).

At the time, my next door neighbor was working for the US Navy as a civilian engineer on a AEGIS system support team.  I asked him what he and his co-workers thought about this accident and he said, "Well, we have mixed feelings about what happened.  On on hand we feel bad about all the people who died.  On the other hand, the system worked just the way we designed it to work!"

Here are some links:

[url]http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5260/vince.html[/url]

[url]http://www.fas.org/news/iran/1992/920721-236044.htm[/url]

[url]http://www.stanford.edu/~lswartz/acad/vincennes.pdf[/url]

[url]http://web.odu.edu/webroot/orgs/ao/mo/nrotc.nsf/files/Vincennes.PDF/$FILE/Vincennes.PDF[/url]

This is background info:

[url]http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id280.htm[/url]

None of the above is the official Navy JAG report but they do include most of the info in the official report.

Take some of the above with a large grain of salt.  The Newsweek article especially is written to inflame the sensitive sheeple and shows the liberal magazine's usual bias to all things military.  Having said that...much of the non-personal stuff is right on the money.

Also, understand what was going on that day...and the "fog of war" that led up to the shootdown.