Word: bandar
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While U.S. officials struggled to explain how the U.S.S. Vincennes had mistakenly shot down Iran Air Flight 655 with 290 civilians aboard, the mullahs who run Iran sought to make the most of their morbid propaganda windfall. Public memorial services took place in at least four cities. At Bandar Abbas, the coastal town from which the doomed jet took off, reporters were given a look at some of the bloated and mutilated bodies of the victims, about 170 of whom had been dragged from the Persian Gulf by week...
...first, it seemed like a triumph of high technology. Supersophisticated radar aboard the U.S.S. Vincennes picked up the airplane almost as soon as it took off from the Iranian airport of Bandar Abbas, on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Within moments the radar received enough information about altitude, speed and flight path for Captain Will Rogers III to reach a conclusion: the plane was a hostile fighter flying an attack pattern. An IFF (Identification, Friend or Foe) signal bounced back by the approaching aircraft seemed to confirm that conclusion. Two missiles launched by the Vincennes were electronically guided precisely...
...Iranian side, both civilian and military jets take off from Bandar Abbas airport. Military traffic controllers keep close watch on ship movements in the gulf; they must have known that the Vincennes was engaged in a gun battle with Iranian speedboats (two were eventually sunk) only twelve miles offshore at the southern end of the gulf at the very moment that Flight 655 took off. Yet apparently nobody warned the civilian traffic controllers that Flight 655's path would take it directly over a developing firefight; had the controllers known that, they say, they would have delayed the takeoff...
...Vincennes beam seven warning messages -- three on a civilian radio frequency, four on a military one -- at the approaching aircraft; the nearby frigate Sides chipped in with five more. The pilot of the Airbus never answered -- although he had been chattering away to the control tower at Bandar Abbas throughout his brief flight. His last words: "I am at level one-two-zero ((12,000 ft.)), climbing to one-four-zero ((14,000 ft.))." The last words from the controller at Bandar Abbas, who was about to turn over control to a center in Tehran: "Goodbye, have a nice flight...
...missiles, at least one of which hit the plane at an approximate range of six miles. Because of poor visibility, the jet was not visually sighted until the missile hit. The plane turned out to be Iran Air Flight 655 en route from the Iranian coastal city of Bandar Abbas to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates...