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Iran Air Flight 655 was a commercial flight operated by Iran Air, that flew on a Tehran-Bandar Abbas-Dubai International Airport in Dubai, United Arab Emirates route.
On July 3, 1988, the flight was shot down on the Bandar Abbas-Dubai leg.
The first leg of the flight went as planned, and the plane, an Airbus A300, left Bandar Abbas at 9:50am that day. It would have been a 28 minute flight.
At that same time, the US Navy guided missile cruiser, USS Vincennes, fitted with the Aegis total weapon system, was nearby at the Strait of Hormuz which the commercial airliner, flown by captain Mohsen Resaian,would pass overhead. The American ship was captained by Commander William C. Rogers III.
What happened next has long been debated, but, according to US records, the American ship identified the Iranian airplane as an attacking military jet. The American ship tried more than once to contact Flight 655, but there was no acknowledgement. At 9.54am, with the the civilian jet about 10 miles away, the Americans fired SM-2 antiaircraft missiles. One broke the plane into two halves and also damaged the plane's tail and right wing sections. The Vincennes crew, thinking they had intercepted a military airplane, celebrated. To their horror, they soon discovered the downed jet was a civilian airplane, when many pieces of luggage and even bodies were seen floating near their ship.
The official version of the tragedy of Flight 655 has been questioned by many, including a writer of the Newsweek magazine, who said that, since all talks in international flights between pilots and control towers must be done in English, the occupants of the USS Vincennes should have known that the plane nearing them was a commercial jet-liner. Some people also blamed the bombing of Pan Am 103 on Iran Air Flight 655 'avengers'.
This accident almost caused an international incident with the Iranian president vowing revenge on America a few days later.
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