William Chapel Rogers III[1] (born December 13, 1938[2]) is a former officer in the United States Navy, most notable as the captain of USS Vincennes, a Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruiser.

While under his command, the ship shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in the Persian Gulf, killing 290 civilians and creating an international incident.

In December 1969, Rogers reported to USS Vreeland, a Knox-class frigate to be the commissioning operations officer homeported in Charleston, South Carolina.

After attending Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia Rogers worked with three admirals in Washington, D.C., and was assigned to the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group under the Secretary of Defense.

Prior to his command of USS Vincennes he served in the Pentagon as the head of a section in the Planning Division of Chief of Naval Operations.

[2] On April 25, 1988, Vincennes was deployed on a six-month cruise in support of Operation Earnest Will, the reflagging and escort of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.

The investigation also pointed out that Rogers thought that he had an increased burden to act since he was also assigned to protect the frigate USS Elmer Montgomery.

[9] In 2004, Marita Turpin and Niek du Plooy of the Centre for Logistics and Decision Support partially attributed the accident to an expectancy bias introduced by the Aegis Combat System and faulted the design and "unhelpful user interface" as contributing to the errors of judgment.

[13] In 1990, Captain Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit decoration "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989."

[14] Nine months after the downing of Iran Air Flight 655, on the morning of March 10, 1989, Rogers' wife Sharon escaped uninjured when a pipe bomb exploded and set fire to her minivan as she sat stopped at a red light across the street from the University Towne Center shopping mall in San Diego.

[5] Five months later, the Associated Press reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had shifted focus away from terrorism towards the possibility of someone with a personal vendetta against Captain Rogers.

[15] As of 2003, the bombing of Rogers' van remained an unsolved case, despite a major investigation involving at some time up to 300 police and FBI agents.