ActionScript 3.0 :: Mouse Controls Not Working As Expected In IE?

I am developing a simple galaga clone for my site, its at [URL] . You will notice the controls work fine in firefox, opera, safari, chrome, etc. However, in IE, the controls are only triggered if the mouse cursor is hovering directly over the player ship.

The playership object is created in the main document class which passes a reference to the stage to the playership class.

private var ourShip:playerShip = new playerShip(stage, ourHUD);

Which is then added to the stage from within the document class (gameMain)

stage.addChild(ourShip);

The playership class then monitors the mouseX and reacts accordingly. The code for the ship controls which are linked to the enter_frame eventhandler is

Code:
public function controlShip(e:Event):void {
var a1 = stageRef.mouseY - e.target.y;
var b1 = stageRef.mouseX - e.target.x;
var radians1 = Math.atan2(a1,b1);

[Code]....