Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

An airliner squawking a civilian code the entire time, on a known civilian route, in contact with ATC the entire time, on commercial air corridor amber 59, yet the ship tried to contact them on military frequencies and did not have any equipment for civilian air traffic frequencies. And because ethe US navy personnel didn't follow their own rules for resetting range identification, they (on the ship) designated it with an erroneous unfriendly IFF code, also erroneously stating that the aircraft was descending towards the ship, which it was not. And as opposed to the ship that shot it down, the crew of USS Sides, which issued one final challenge after the 10 of Vincennes, indicated that they had from take-off identified Flight 655 as a commercial flight. We had issued a NOTAM to stay more than 5 miles away from warships and that civilian traffic may continue as long as it originated/went to approved locations, which this one did. We screwed this up bad. Fog of war isn't an excuse to not follow procedure.