US Warship Shot Down Passenger Plane - 290 Killed, Captain Got Medal

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[00:00:00]July 3rd, 1988. The Persian Gulf was a powder keg. Captain Will Rogers commanded [music] the USS Vincennes, America's most advanced warship. His crew was on high alert. At 10:24 [music] a.m., radar picked up an aircraft climbing fast, 290 mph, heading straight for them. Rogers had 40 seconds to [music] decide. Fighter jet or passenger plane? He chose wrong. Iran Air Flight 655 was climbing through 14,000 [music] ft when the missile hit. 290 civilians vaporized instantly. 66 were children.

[00:00:32]The Airbus had been flying in a commercial corridor, squawking civilian codes, right on schedule. But in the chaos of combat, Rogers saw only a threat. The Pentagon called it justified self-defense. They gave Rogers a medal.

[00:00:45]>> [music] >> Iran called it murder. 28 years later, America finally paid $61 million to the families, but they never said [music] sorry, never admitted fault. To this day, Iranians remember July 3rd as the day America shot their children from the sky and got rewarded for it.