Clearly the Russians are only doing this because the UK's long range bomber/patrol aircraft are doing the same around the North Cape? :}:}:}

I'll get my coat.....

Beagle: If that article is the actual truth, then yes, Rogers should have been court martialled. No doubt about it.

However, I see no citings for official sources. Therefore, it's believability cannot supersede the official report on what happened.

LiveryMan, on November 6, 2003 the International Court of Justice concluded that the U.S. Navy's actions in the Persian Gulf at the time had been unlawful.

"Why is this headline news, during the 70's and 80's it was the norm during the cold war. The big difference now is, the russians are still using the now museum piece the Bear while the western world has moved on slightly to the Typhoon."

no the western world still uses B52 for these purposes which is right from the Bear era

This may be of interest to those who've read BEagle's link - Vincennes: A Case Study | U.S. Naval Institute


I must admit that I thought Rogers retired as a Captain. I have no idea how accurate he was in thinking this, but about 10-12 years ago, a USN officer of my acquaintance speculated that the initial 'it must be the Iranians' fault' approach had been rushed out, it became impossible to CM the Captain and he was instead given a decent final tour before being eased out of the door. (Said USN officer was in the 'WTF was he not court-martialled?' camp).


The boss of the USS Sides was rather unimpressed and displayed a certain amount of testicular fortitude in making his views clear...


https://microeconomics.files.wordpre...roceedings.pdf (the formatting is a bit awkward because of the way the original publication laid out its letters, but if you know this you can pick your way through). Needless to say, David Carlson didn't make Admiral either...

http://www.flankers-site.co.uk/tu-95_files/tu-95_37.jpg

I went on board that at Fairford, it was fairly new then, the inside was pristine but old fashioned. Remember those nixie tube displays? They were all over the inside.

http://tubehobby.com/images/in18/1.jpg

Just after I stepped out of it, I looked up to see this:

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviatio.../6/0692619.jpg

I may be flamed for this, but this incident, as well as the MiG collision, the near collision between Russian aircraft and a BA flight over the UK in 1997 and the incident where an Aeroflot crew allowed a child to take the controls which resulted in a crash with 100% fatalities, leads me to suspect that a lot of Russian aircrew tend not to show the same professionalism as those of many other nations.

And with regard to shoot downs, I believe there is a long list of unarmed aircraft, military and civilian, that have fallen to the guns of Soviet fighters while going about their day-to-day business between 1945 and 1991, naughty or otherwise.

I've seen them in some fairly hairy third world environments and I think they are pretty professional but not so risk averse

More like the USAFor RAF around 1970 ................

Question

When the Ruskis fly down the Channel we see lots of (MoD PR) pics of our brave boys alongside - do the French, Belgians and Netherlands also escort them???

I know the Norwegians and the Swedes are pretty active but what about everyone else???

Having worked the English Channel sectors as a Military controller, embedded within the LATCC Ops Room, i can imagine the disruption that caused at FL 295 or whatever.

I think the most polite phrase I could use is "Not a very good idea from a safety aspect", especially if there's no Mode C to give anyone a clue (although I assume the escorting aircraft would be so doing). But it used to require substantial effort to thread Mil traffic through that airspace at any level, coordinating with everyone and anyone. An uncontrollable 'unknown' requires EVERYONE to get out of his way, and that in NOT a bit of airspace where you want to do that.


I recall the Lakenheath Wing, doing French Low Level activity, bugging out due to weather and climbing out of France to go home through the Seaford Sector ... no flight plans, no pre-warning, just a dozen or more aircraft popping up on frequency needing to climb and go home through all the airways. Happy days of the great Civ/Mil relationship at LATCC ;)

Heathrow Harry, yes the French were also up on Wednesday afternoon

Robocruiser is right. A USN carrier was not to far away at the time and well within range to send a section of F-14s or F-18s to check out the contact. The problem was the air wing knew of the cruisers reputation and didn't want to go near it in case it shot at them. Another point is the contact was thought to be an F-14 and the crew of a USN air defence ship should well know that a Tomcat ( at the time ) has next to zero capability to hurt a ship. M61 20mm cannon only and the jet would be well within visual range by the time it was close enough to use it.

Vincennes - I seem to recollect that one of the most embarrassing elements of this whole tragedy was that The Most Technically Advanced war fighting system (i.e. hardware, software, RoE, human and chain-of-command) couldn't differentiate between an benign airliner and something more aggressive. Whichever way you look at it, a rather uncomfortable state of affairs for a super-power to have to admit.

Dr Strangelove played-out in reality.

Support the claim please.

Shields up ?
 

Qué? No KK ? No KKKidding ???

LFH

At 09:28, 200 miles to the south, the USS Forrestal launched 2 x F-14s and 2 x A-7s. The aircraft headed for Point Alpha, a rendezvous point 50 miles outside the Strait of Hormuz. Once there, they would be less than 80 miles from the Vincennes.

At 09:47, the Iranian A300 took off on its routine commercial flight and was observed to have done so by the Vincennes.

Lt Cmdr Lustig, the Vincennes' tactical commander for air warfare, could see that the Forrestal's F-14s were circling 5 min away and could have been vectored onto the suspected target to confirm its identity before it reached the point where Rogers had said that he would launch against it.

However, since 09:41 Will Rogers was inside Iranian waters busily firing 5 inch shells at Iranian boats, shouting and yelling at his gunners to reload faster.

Then at 09:54 Rogers approved the launch of his 2 missiles.

It was perhaps wise of the Forrestal's Admiral Smith to keep his aircraft clear of a gung-ho idiot such as Rogers, whose trigger-happiness was well known. However, his own crew suspected that the target was a commercial airliner, but it seems that they didn't pass this information to the Vincennes. It probably wouldn't have done any good if they had though, as Rogers was surrounded by confusion of his own creation.

I wonder whether Rogers has ever thought about the 290 innocent civilians he killed by his inept behaviour.

I heard a very loud sonic boom Wednesday afternoon (loud enough to make the house shake) at approx. 1400A, I'm guessing it was a French interceptor heading West.

Thanks gents - any pictures?

Heathrow Harry wrote,

Yes. When the Tu-95s use the North Sea route and come down far enough. The Netherlands claimed last year that Tu-95s had encroached inside their airspace and were escorted out.

Dutch fighter jets intercept 2 Russian bombers in their airspace - CNN.com

On rare ocassions the Luftwaffe QRA also get a chance over the North Sea. On 11th September 2012 Luftwaffe F-4 Phantoms were scrambled for the Tu-95s.

Dutch F-16 footage from 2011 of a Tu-95MS Bear H over the North Sea.



Even the Portuguese had a visit from the Bears in late 2014.

http://www.cavok.com.br/blog/wp-cont...1/x26_2091.jpg

Minor pedant point guys; The CVA in the Hormuz tragedy was the Forrestal :8