> they saw this contact heading towards them labeled as an F-14 fighter.
What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship. Was there no moment where they thought "maybe there has been a mistake?" - like where Stanislav Petrov chose to interpret the Soviet early warning system telling him an ICBM was incoming as being a result of some faulty instruments.
Granted the stakes were slightly different - downing one airliner is less severe than risking starting a global nuclear annihilation.
> What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship.
What is sudden about that? "Two months before the incident, the U.S. had engaged in Operation Praying Mantis, resulting in the sinkings of the Iranian frigate Sahand, the Iranian fast attack craft Joshan, and three Iranian speedboats. Also, the Iranian frigate Sabalan was crippled, two Iranian platforms were destroyed, and an Iranian fighter was damaged. A total of at least 56 Iranian crew were killed"
And on the very day their helicopter received small arm fire from an Iranian patrol vessel, which they were pursuing when the shoot-down happened.
In this situation the idea that Iran would launch a fighter against them is not that wild.
Patrol ship sees and engages a foreign warship inside the patrol's territorial waters and radios for help. First fighter available launches and flies that way to investigate. Sees the warship engaged with the patrol boat and takes initiative, while other fighters are prepping for launch for follow on attacks in case the invading warship does not retreat or surrender.
The issue is "single". Does scrambling a single fighter ever happen, don't they always fly in pairs? A single attack or recognisance plane would make sense.
Of course they might have known that their ability to properly identify the threat was limited, but that raises even more questions...
The USS Stark was attacked by an (Iraqi) Dassault Falcon 50, not by a fighter jet. Fighters operating solo is virtually unheard of, especially in a live offensive posture.
Even if you usually run in pairs, if your gunboat is engaging a foreign hostile, and only one fighter has a pilot immediately available, are you going to wait for a second pilot or just send what you have?
I looked into this "small arms fire" you mentioned. You're right that it wasn't out of nowhere, but the actual story seems to be somewhat more nuanced than your very carefully worded depiction suggests:
> All 290 on-board including 16 crew perished. At the time of the incident, Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters and engaged in small arms combat with several Iranian surface craft
Did you miss that bit?
I mean in that context, with the guy stumbling into Iranian waters and shooting at some of their boats it makes more sense that he'd be worried about an attack. But that just makes the situation even stupider and more avoidable in my opinion.
UI failings aside, a few points, mostly from the US Naval Institute's Proceedings[2] (which has references to the Official Investigation "Fogarty report"[3])
- it was standard practice to illuminate Iranian military aircraft with missile fire control radar as a warning for them to turn around. "When you put that radar on them, they went home. They were not interested in any missiles," Captain Carlson recalled.
- the captain of the Vincennes was known as trigger-happy and the Vincennes was nicknamed the Robo-Cruiser.
- the Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time of the shoot-down
- data from USS Vincennes' tapes, information from USS Sides and reliable intelligence information corroborate the fact that TN 4131 was on a normal commercial air flight plan profile…squawking Mode III 6760, on a continuous ascent in altitude from take-off at Bandar Abbas to shoot down."
- "Capt. Rogers was a difficult student. He wasn’t interested in the expertise of the instructors and had the disconcerting habit of violating the Rules of Engagement in the wargames." [2]
- Commander Lustig, the air-warfare coordinator, even won the navy's Commendation Medal for "heroic achievement," his "ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire," enabling him to "quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure.
- all hands aboard the Vincennes and the Elmer Montgomery received combat action ribbons."
> Then Vice President George Bush had gone before the United Nations on 14 July and declared, "One thing is clear, and that is that USS Vincennes acted in self-defense…It occurred in the midst of a naval attack initiated by Iranian vessels [...]
> As it came to pass, none of this was true.
> However, the truth of the matter would have given the Democratic candidate for President, Michael Dukakis, ammunition to embarrass George Bush.
> There were good reasons for spinning the story in a way that put the Iranians in the worst possible light.
And so the trigger happy captain got that ribbon instead
a US frigate (uss stark) was severely damaged by a single Iraqi plane in the previous year. the captain did not expect an Iraqi attack, so he tried to warn the plane off multiple times, ultimately allowing it to fire two missiles which hit his ship. the missiles would likely have been shot down if the Stark's countermeasures were working correctly. but they weren't, and 37 Americans died.
given that context, it doesn't seem wild to take an Iranian plane as a serious threat.
As far as I understand it, a single F14 could launch a single Exocet missile, and make a VERY large hole in an aircraft carrier, and if the conditions were right, putting it to the bottom of the sea. Or the same for a battleship. I seem to recall that being a large concern even then, if not especially then.
To my knowledge, the F-14 never carried any anti-ship missile, especially on the early-model Iranian Tomcats, as the F-14 only received an air-to-ground upgrade package in the 90’s.
Given the fact that Iran successfully jury-rigged MIM-23 Hawk SAMs onto their F-14s, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they could do something similar with Exocet.
During the Falklands war there were worries that the Argies were fitting Exocet to LearJets (turns out they were used for recce and communications), and Chile also had a project on the books to convert Falcon biz jets to carry Exocet. And, some say USS Stark was itself attacked by a Falcon carrying Exocets. Grafting missiles onto a warplane that already has hardpoints and the like seems like an easier task.
... which we can all discuss at leisure from our armchairs with zero of the stress associated with being in the command chair that day.
Just because commenters here may come up with some down-in-the-weeds detailed analysis that could have, if known then, changed the course of events, does not mean that it's reasonable to have come up with that in the heat of battle.
There is a reason that the practice is called "Monday Morning Quarterbacking".
If you are commander of an explicitly Anti-Air cruiser, and you are unaware that any F-14 tasked against you would not have an anti-ship missile and would be abusing some other weapon "off-label", then you should not be defending a carrier fleet from aircraft. You should be familiar with the airframes, weapons, and abilities of your adversary.
The F-14 is not an attack aircraft! It was designed to intercept incoming air threats and bombers!
"And it never made any search or track radar emissions"
"Yup"
"And it was climbing out of the area, and despite all your instruments showing it continuing to climb, you all asserted it was diving for an attack run"
"Right"
"And instead of trying to further deconflict, or ask any of the other local navy vessels their interpretation, or just take a risk and accept that as a member of the military sometimes your job is to stand up in the line of fire, you decided that this was definitely an F-14 interceptor, being used to attack an AEGIS vessel whose intended design is to protect an american aircraft carrier from 20 simultaneous incoming Soviet antiship missiles, and was definitely a threat to said vessel"
"Yup"
"And now 290 innocent people are dead"
The captain of the Vincennes also claims they were in "hot pursuit" of a small Iranian gunboat in "self defense" at the time, and was noted by superiors as regularly going beyond his Rules of Engagement in training activities. He had a chip on his shoulder and clearly made up his mind about what he was going to do to that plane well before he had any indication it was a threat. A nearby vessel that was datalinked (ie, was hooked into the same battlefield map and signals) very quickly and clearly concluded it was a civilian flight. Capt Rogers convinced himself otherwise.
>What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship.
Limited hit and run attacks were typical Iranian behavior at the time.
The US tested to see if the F-14 could launch a Harpoon anti-ship missile just a couple of years prior to this because Iran had both F-14s and Harpoons. The test was successful.
It is highly unlikely that Iran ever equipped the F-14 with Harpoons but the thought that they would because it was a capability they possessed was a very real fear at the time.
Maybe (probably?) it did seem crazy, but the officers sought verification from the system and seemed to get it.
They were probably unaware that there was an airliner in their vicinity, as it had been incorrectly tagged as an F-14. I don't know where the actual F-14 was, but quite possibly nowhere in the vicinity of the ship.
It was a disgraceful dereliction of duty by the implementers of Aegis to recycle contact IDs so eagerly. With 4 digits it should have taken 10,000 subsequent contacts before that number came around again.
It was a lack of imagination. They didn't anticipate that case and probably just selected the contact IDs randomly. A bad RNG and an unlucky day is all it takes.
No amount of training is likely to completely remove human factors. It helps, sometimes a lot, but there's always going to be a bit of a difference thinking actual ordinance is currently headed directly at you.
We got _incredibly_ lucky. A Soviet submarine trying to get through the blockade believed that war had broken out and wanted to attack the US fleet with nuclear torpedoes [0]. Normally only two men aboard the sub had to approve the nuclear launch, and they both wanted to fire. This particular sub happened to have a third officer [1] on board who also needed to approve the launch, and he may have literally saved the world by disagreeing with the other two officers.
1. More time to think. An incoming F-14 is a minutes/seconds scenario; the Cuban crisis lasted 10 days.
2. "X did not happen" does not mean "Y was not a factor in X". The "about to get blown up" factor was part of the reason the Cuban missile crisis happened; it's also probably part of the resolution.
All evidence is that Captain Will Rogers was a very different kind of person than Stanislav Petrov. The US military is famous for preferring "forward leaning" types.
Doesn't sound like the guy Will Rogers made that decision though. It sounds like he just blindly trusted his instruments, knowing he could act with impunity. He was right - after all is said and done he killed 290 innocent people and he ended up getting something called the "Legion of Merit" so it doesn't sound like it bothered too many people there.
What's wild to me is the assumption that Iran would suddenly launch a single F-14 fighter to attack a ship. Was there no moment where they thought "maybe there has been a mistake?" - like where Stanislav Petrov chose to interpret the Soviet early warning system telling him an ICBM was incoming as being a result of some faulty instruments.
Granted the stakes were slightly different - downing one airliner is less severe than risking starting a global nuclear annihilation.