Comment by mikece

I served on the sister ship of the Vincennes in the early 90 and knew some guys who were in her combat info center when that went down. The Airbus had turned off civilian squawk and was in a dive directly at the Vincennes — hardly what civilian airliners are supposed to do. Then again, even in a dive an Airbus can’t go as fast as an F-14 in a vertical climb so while the maneuver was provocative it didn’t fit the military jet attack profile, something the Iranians knew as well. Both sides screw with each other during a Cold War and usually lives aren’t lost. This was a huge, unfortunate exception.