On Sunday, December 22, a US Navy guided-missile cruiser, the USS Gettysburg, mistakenly shot down an American fighter jet over the Red Sea. This was not the first incident of friendly fire by the U.S. Navy, nor the most tragic.
On Sunday morning, July 3, 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, an Aegis cruiser in the Persian Gulf, the USS Vincennes, fired two Standard Missiles at a commercial Iranian Airbus, IR 655. Captain Will Rogers III and his crew had mistaken the ascending passenger jet with 290 people on board for a descending Iranian F-14, a fighter plane.
