The U.S. Navy Has A History of Shooting Down the Wrong Planes

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Mystifying is the word that describes how a U.S. Navy cruiser managed to shoot down a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet over the Red Sea this week.

But it is no less mystifying than the U.S. Navy shooting down an Iranian airliner in 1988 – because it mistook an Airbus A300 for an Iranian F-14 Tomcat fighter.

While the U.S. Navy has yet to reveal specifics of the F-/A-18 shootdown, both incidents appear to have featured highly trained crews – equipped with some of most sophisticated air defense systems in the world – making the most negligent of mistakes.

A Familiar Set of Challenges for the U.S. Navy 

On July 3, 1988, the Middle East was in turmoil much as it is today. Rather than Israel versus Iran and its proxies, the combatants were Iran and Iraq, which had invaded Iran in 1980. The Iran-Iraq War lasted for eight years and killed at least 500,000 soldiers and civilians.

In a conflict that often degenerated into the stalemate of trench warfare, both oil-exporting nations turned to economic warfare by attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. In response to the “Tanker War,” the U.S. Navy began escorting tankers in 1987. The war was dangerous for escorts as well as merchant ships: in May 1987, the American frigate USS Stark was nearly sunk – and 37 sailors died — after being hit by an air-launched Iraqi Exocet missile. 

Already in a cold war with the hardline Islamic government in Iran, the U.S. sank Iranian ships that were laying mines or attacking maritime traffic. “For several months preceding the Airbus shootdown, the U.S. had received reports of Iranian efforts to improve their ability to attack U.S. men-of-war,” stated the Department of Defense’s report on the incident. “These have included attempts to outfit both aircraft and small boats…for suicide assaults, to reconfigure F-4s, F-l4s, and other types of aircraft to carry a variety of air-to-surface missiles, and to develop small boat “swarm” tactics which could break through a warship’s defensive gunfire.”

This is prologue to the events of July 3, 1988, when the cruiser USS Vincennes was on patrol in the Strait of Hormuz. A 10,000-ton Ticonderoga-class vessel equipped with the Aegis air defense system of radars and surface-to-air missiles, the Vincennes was one of the more capable anti-aircraft ships of the time. 

But any warship would have been taxed that July morning. A swarm of Iranian speedboats had threatened – and fired on – merchant vessels and U.S. Navy helicopters. They were engaged by the Vincennes and other American warships.

Meanwhile, Iran Air 655 – with 290 passengers and crew – took off from Bandar Abbas Airport on its regularly scheduled flight from Iran to Dubai. It was supposed to be a 30-minute flight; the twin-engine Airbus 300 would only climb to 14,000 feet as it crossed the Persian Gulf to Dubai. And as is common with commercial flights, Iran Air 655 took off 27 minutes late and then entered its designated flight corridor.

Unfortunately, Bandar Abbas was a military as well as a civilian airport, where some of Iran’s American-made F14 fighters were based. “Although Flight 655 was detected by Vincennes’s radar shortly after takeoff, the cruiser also detected a Mode II (military) identification, friend or foe (IFF) reading, most likely from an F-14 on the ground at Bandar Abbas,” according to a U.S. Navy history. “The operator mistakenly correlated the Mode II signal with the aircraft taking off rather than with the plane on the ground.”

Though other American warships in the area had correctly identified the airliner, the Vincennes mistook it for an F-14 that was actually on the ground. Capt. William Rogers, commanding the Vincennes, was already busy dealing with the Iranian gunboats. Now he was told that an Iranian F-14 was descending toward the cruiser on what seemed to be an attack run.

Warnings to the airliner over military and civilian frequencies went unanswered (the Airbus wouldn’t have been equipped to receive military transmissions anyway). When the aircraft closed to within 10 miles of the Vincennes, the cruiser fired two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles. There were no survivors. 

The U.S. Navy investigation blamed multiple factors, including the short amount of time that the Vincennes had to react to an approaching aircraft. The U.S. government paid $61 million in compensation. The captain of the Vincennes received the Legion of Merit, though other Navy officers “were less charitable, believing that Rogers’s over-aggressive actions had gotten him into a jam of his own making,” the Navy history noted.

Learning from Past Mistakes? 

In hindsight, accidents often seem preventable. Yet they do happen. Nonetheless, how one of the world’s most advanced warships at the time could have made such a mistake still seems incredible. 

While the investigation into the recent F/A-18 incident is still underway, it is likely to discover that a chain of mistakes led to the destruction of a $55 million aircraft. To be fair, navies arguably face a more dangerous environment today than in 1988. Back then, surface ships faced anti-ship missiles, torpedoes, bombs and mines.

Today, they must also contend with drones, hypersonic missiles and long-range ballistic missiles. U.S. warships in the Red Sea have been attacked multiple times by Houthi missiles and drones.

Nonetheless, then and now, there were major failures by well-trained crews equipped with advanced technology. The only certainty is that it is likely to happen again.

About the Author: Michael Peck 

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.