Russian national and self admitted FSB Colonel Igor Girkin admits they shot it down. They thought it was a Ukrainian An-26 supply plane:
https://twitter.com/myroslavapetsa/status/489795820070658048
So... a simple ‘oops’ is going to be accepted here?
Prayers for those on board, any word on where they were heading?
Toward the end of the war, on July 3, 1988, a U.S. Navy ship called the Vincennes was exchanging fire with small Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Navy kept ships there, and still does, to protect oil trade routes. As the American and Iranian ships skirmished, Iran Air Flight 655 took off from nearby Bandar Abbas International Airport, bound for Dubai. The airport was used by both civilian and military aircraft. The Vincennes mistook the lumbering Airbus A300 civilian airliner for a much smaller and faster F-14 fighter jet, perhaps in the heat of battle or perhaps because the flight allegedly did not identify itself. It fired two surface-to-air missiles, killing all 290 passengers and crew members on board.
Good catch.