The USS Vincennes was a guided missile cruiser nicknamed Robocruiser in reference to its Aegis system, and on July 3, 1988, in the midst of a skirmish with Iranian gunboats during the Iran-Iraq war, its radar system warned of an incoming aircraft. Captain William Rodgers III inferred that they were being attacked by a diving Iranian F-14 fighter jet and gave the Aegis system approval to fire. What he didn’t realize at the time was that they shot down Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian Iranian passenger jet, killing all 290 people on board and causing international outrage.
