in 1988, a us warship, the vincennes shot down an iranian passengerjet over the persian gulf, killing all 290 people on board. first—hand accounts of the incident are rare, but the witness spoke to rudy pahoyo, a us navy combat cameraman who happened to be filming on the vincennes that day. it was a tragedy. we did shoot down an airliner. one of those things, i am still in disbelief that it could have happened. the mood in the gulf was very intense. iran, iraq were in the middle of a war at the time. us navy was taking the oil tankers that came out of kuwait to make sure the flow of oil kept coming to the united states and the iranians were harassing those ships. the boghammer speedboats that the iranians were using, they would round robin the ships while they are shooting, trying to catch it on fire. so ourjob was kind of like a police force, if you will. the team i was with was combat camera group. i'm videotaping the whole time. and i caught a ride with the uss vincennes, a cruiser, a billion—dollar boat, state—of—the—art at the time. as we were sailing back to bahrain, w