Sea Of Lies

"Possible Astro!" Anderson sang out, at a moment of near chaos in the CIC. It was 9:51. Having swung full circle, Rogers was now bringing his reloaded forward gun to bear on the Iranian launches. The gun fired off 11 rounds-and jammed. The skipper again ordered the rudder hard over. The stern swung around, and in the CIC, papers and books toppled off consoles as the ship heeled over. At his station to Rogers's left, Lustig looked at his screen. The incoming plane was 32 miles away. What do we do? he asked Rogers.

His commanding officer was not too overwhelmed by the Iranian speedboats to forget the woeful example of Capt. Glenn Brindel, the skipper of the USS Stark. A year earlier, the luckless Brindel had been in the head when his ship was struck and almost sunk by a pair of anti-ship missiles fired by the pilot of a lone Iraqi Mirage F-1. Rogers had decided that the Vincennes's fire-control radar would "paint" any possibly hostile plane that got within 30 miles. At 20 miles, the Vincennes would shoot it down.

Rogers was not absolutely sure that his ship did face an enemy warplane. The plane seemed too high--some 7,000 feet-for an attack approach. At his rear, another officer, Lt. William Mountford, warned "possible commair. " Three more times, the warnings went out: "Iranian fighter ... you are steering into danger and are subject to United States naval defensive measures."

Then something happened that psychologists call "scenario fulfillment"-you see what you expect. Petty Officers Anderson and Leach both began singing out that the aircraft, now definitively tagged on the big screen as an F-14, was descending and picking up speed. The tapes of the CIC's data later showed no such thing. Anderson's screen showed that the plane was traveling 380 knots at 12,000 feet and climbing. Yet Anderson was shouting out that the speed was 455 knots, the altitude 7,800 feet and descending.

Rogers had to make a decision. An F-14 could do little damage to the Vincennes. The version that Washington sold its ally the Shah of Iran in the early 1970s was purely a fighter plane, not configured to strike surface targets. Still, if Rogers meant to attack it with a missile, he had to fire before the aircraft closed much within 10 miles. At 9:54:05, with the plane 11 miles away, Rogers reached up and switched the firing key to "free" the ship's SM-2 antiaircraft missiles. In Air Alley, Zocher had been given the green light to fire. The young lieutenant was so undone, that he pressed the wrong keys on his console 23 times. A veteran petty officer had to lean over and hit the right ones. With a whoosh, two SM-2s launched into the haze. In the CIC, the lights dimmed momentarily, like a prison's during an electrocution.

Some 10 miles away, Captain Rezaian of Iran Air was calmly reporting to Bandar Abbas that he had reached his first checkpoint crossing the gulf. He heard none of the Vincennes's warnings. His four radio bands were taken up with air-control chatter. "Have a nice day," the tower radioed. "Thank you, good day," replied the pilot. Thirty seconds later, the first missile blew the left wing off his aircraft.