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- <text id=89TT2365>
- <title>
- Sep. 11, 1989: American Notes:The Navy
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Sep. 11, 1989 The Lonely War:Drugs
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 31
- American Notes
- THE NAVY
- Rebuke for the "Robo Cruiser"
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Fourteen months after the U.S.S. Vincennes mistakenly shot
- down an Iranian passenger airliner over the Persian Gulf,
- killing all 290 people on board, Captain Will Rogers III and his
- crew last week came in for criticism from the commander of a
- vessel that was part of the same task force. In the September
- issue of the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings, Commander David
- Carlson asserts that the Vincennes had been run in a
- "consistently aggressive" manner and that this contributed to
- the decision to fire on the jet, which crew members mistook for
- an F-14 fighter.
- </p>
- <p> Carlson, who was 20 nautical miles away, aboard the frigate
- Sides, says his crew had correctly identified the Airbus as
- nonthreatening. But the Vincennes crew, he speculates,
- "hankered for an opportunity to show their stuff," particularly
- their sophisticated Aegis antiaircraft system. "An atmosphere
- of restraint was not her strong suit," he dryly notes, adding
- that Navy wags had earlier dubbed the Vincennes "Robo Cruiser."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-