Originally Posted by
WHBM
Now in every US warship at the time the quartermaster carried the current Official Airline Guide (OAG), principally to arrange tickets for crew members. The flights from Bandar Abbas to Dubal were straightforwardly listed in there. So the information of the flight time and route of the aircraft was all there on board their ship. Just nobody had thought to look.
It's worse than that.
The Vincennes did indeed have a flight schedule showing departures from Bandar Abbas, but the US crew failed to take into account the difference between Iranian local time and the time zone that the ship was using. This, combined with a 27 minute delay to IR655's departure, led to the incorrect conclusion that no commercial flight could be expected to be over the area at the time in question.