Capt. Rogers Begins Job Teaching Tactics
Capt. Will Rogers III, who was at the helm of the U.S. warship that destroyed an Iranian airliner a year ago in the Persian Gulf, took over Saturday as commander of a Navy group that teaches tactics to senior officers, the Navy said.
Rogers relieved Capt. Todd Barthold as commanding officer of the San Diego-based Tactical Training Group, Pacific, at a traditional, low-key ceremony.
The new assignment seemed to underline the Navy’s official conclusion that Rogers made the right decision in firing at an Iran Air Airbus on July 3, 1988, given the facts he had available to him and the split-second decisions he had to make. All 290 people aboard the jet were killed.
The Pentagon said the guided-missile cruiser Vincennes, Rogers’ ship at the time, mistook the airliner for an attacking Iranian F-14 fighter when it took off from Bandar Abbas for Dubai across the Strait of Hormuz.
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