NBC “Nightly News” anchor and managing editor, Brian Williams has retracted his long-standing claim that he was in a Chinook helicopter when it was hit by rockets and small arms fire from the ground in Iraq in March 2003.

Williams admitted he was in a different helicopter, saying, “I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft,” adding that the mistake was “unintentional.” Williams, who was in Iraq to report on in the early phase of the invasion of Iraq for NBC, arrived an hour later on another helicopter and was never in any danger.

The admission came after Williams told the oft-repeated story on NBC’s “Nightly News” broadcast on Friday, Jan. 30 as the network aired footage of him at a New York Rangers hockey game tribute to (Ret.) Command Sgt. Maj. Tim Terpak.

During the broadcast, Williams said, “The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG. Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”

Crew members from the 195^th Aviation Regiment took exception to Williams’ version of the events of Mar. 24, 2003, and spoke out in “Stars and Stripes,” the newspaper of the U.S. Armed Forces. Door gunner, Mike O’Keeffe said that the story has irritated him since he first saw NBC’s report 12 years ago. “Over the years it faded,” he said, “and then to see it last week it was — I can’t believe he is still telling this false narrative.”

Flight Engineer Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller was on the helicopter carrying the NBC journalists and camera crew, and said their Chinook was not hit or forced down as a result of enemy fire, but landed because of an approaching sandstorm. “No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft.” The sandstorm kept Williams and the NBC crew grounded west of Baghdad for several days surrounded by an Army unit heavily fortified with Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams M-1 tanks.

Another member of the 195^th Aviation Regiment posted a direct response on Facebook the day after the tribute aired writing, “Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.”

Lance Reynolds was the flight engineer on one of the helicopters that was hit by two rocket-propelled and small arms fire and made a rough landing, skidding off a runway into the Iraqi desert. On Wednesday, Reynolds said, “It was something personal that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it. It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn’t deserve to participate in.”

In his apology, Williams said, “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another,” but several service members recalled seeing NBC reports making the claim. The network had used Williams’ reported experiences to advertise its coverage of the Iraqi invasion, and its Mar. 26, 2003 broadcast led with the story, “Target Iraq: Helicopter NBC’s Brian Williams Was Riding In Comes Under Fire.”

Although Williams says he reported the event accurately and “misremembered it,” he reiterated the claim in 2008 an NBC blog under his byline saying said he was flying in a four-chopped formation when all four took fire, including the Chinook he was in. “Chinook helicopter flying in front of ours (from the 101st Airborne) took an RPG to the rear rotor.”

Williams also repeated the story, with dramatic detail, on other occasions. In 2013, he told a David Letterman audience, “Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire including the one I was in… we were only at 100 feet doing 100 forward knots. We landed very quickly and hard, and we were stuck, four birds in the middle of the desert. And we were north out ahead of the other Americans.”

Williams, 55, is the anchor of NBC’s evening news program serving as managing editor since 2004, and the news of the lie may be a devastating hit to his credibility and that of the network. His reporting from Iraq and the claim to have been in danger and under live fire lent an air of authority and veracity to NBC’s coverage of the Iraq war.

The complete repudiation of Williams’ story comes as NBC faces both low ratings and issues of journalistic ethics. In 2012, reporter Andrea Mitchell manufactured a supposed “gaffe” by Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. Also that year, the NBC News Division was found to have altered the 911 call made by George Zimmerman minutes before his fatal confrontation with Trayvon Martin in order to portray Zimmerman as a racist. Last summer, the network’s Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, violated an ebola quarantine to go out for fast food after her return from Africa.

In 2005, Williams earned an individual award for his reporting on Hurricane Katrina, and that year NBC won a Peabody Award in “exemplified the highest levels of journalistic excellence in reporting on Hurricane Katrina.”