Bare with me, this takes a bit of explaining.

I had an encounter with my uncle, who was in the US Navy, that I'd like to confirm some details about. He's always been very discrete about his time in the service, no one in our very large and very close family had heard anything about this before, so he's not one to spin stories.

He was really drunk, which is an every day thing, and while usually he mumbles incoherently, while he was arguing with another family member about the recent Syrian refugee crisis, he started going off on something that I could actually understand. It got to be about the idea that Syrians ought to stay and fight, and he started talking about his own service.

Everybody else went quiet at that point, because his military service a bit of a family mystery, and no one has really gotten many details.

He said he'd done things for his country that some people might have lost sleep over, but he never did. Then he kept repeating, we called them, but they didn't reply, we called them but they didn't reply. He didn't say call, but some kind of radio terminology I don't remember. He repeated this a lot. Over the course of the conversation he mentioned his boat was in the Persian gulf and that they fired, and he didn't regret his service. Also something about seeing them on radar.

It was very jumbled, but I'd read the Wikipedia page for the downing recently, so after a while, I made the connection.

I understand the source isn't the best, but he's not one for making up stories. If anyone could direct me to books or online sources to check out, I'd be very appreciative. I want to know more, not just to confirm, but since he was involved and he's my uncle and godfather, I guess I just want to understand the circumstances. Feel free to PM me.