The World - News from Aug. 19, 1988

The Iranian airliner mistakenly shot down by a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf last month was giving only a civilian identification, not a military signal the Pentagon has said it also was emitting, ABC News reported. The television network quoted officials familiar with the Navy investigation of the July 3 incident, in which 290 passengers and crew were killed, as saying the military signals “came from a distant plane.” Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard told a briefing shortly after the incident that the cruiser Vincennes fired two missiles at the A-300 Airbus partly because it was emitting a signal similar to that of an F-14 fighter as well as its civilian identification.