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The first thing I recalled wasn't the Gulf of Tonkin but when the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988. Iranian gunboats had been behaving similarly, putting the ship's inexperienced crew on edge. They mistook the radar blip for an incoming fighter and launched missiles. What a disaster.
Anyway, I'm reluctant to place the blame on the military in this case. When you have large US forces maneuvering around in semi-hostile waters, with 20-year olds manning the stations, how can you not get into these situations. A midshipman mistaking a foreign voice on the radio as Iranian and coming from the boats seems far less serious than mistaking a passenger jet from an incoming fighter and shooting it down, yet that is exactly what happened. I could believe that this was the crew's initial determination. I'll save my criticism for the people who put them in this situation.
