Originally Posted by
Fly.Buy
17 May 1987 the American warship (Frigate) USS Stark was taken out by an Iranian Military jet, initially American intelligence was convinced that the culprit was a Mirage F1, in fact history now shows that the actual aircraft which did the attack was Iranian Dassault Falcon 50 adapted to carry Exocet missiles. Certainly a sleek adgile machine, plenty on the internet about this incident.
To this day there is continuing controversy over whether the attack was mounted by one or more Iraqi Mirage F1 aircraft or a Falcon 50 secretly modified to carry and launch Exocets (supposedly accomplished with the cooperation of both Dassault and Thales).
One story even has the Falcon being intercepted by USN Tomcats after the attack but allowed to continue back to base after claiming to be on a VIP mission. That would, of course, require F-14 crews to be so dumb that they failed to notice underwing pylons on a supposedly civilian jet.