The World : U.S. Cruiser Heads Home

The U.S. missile cruiser Vincennes, the warship that mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner in July at the cost of 290 lives, departed for its home port in the first American force reduction in the Persian Gulf since the Iran-Iraq cease-fire took effect. The 9,600-ton warship, the first of the Navy’s high-tech “Aegis” cruisers deployed in the gulf, was officially detached from the Navy’s Joint Task Force Middle East for the 13,000-mile voyage to San Diego, where it had been based until last April. France also began its planned naval cutbacks in the region, with the Defense Ministry in Paris announcing that it was withdrawing the aircraft carrier Clemenceau and three other ships from its Indian Ocean fleet, which covers the gulf.