Self-fire

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May 1944: The elevator of a US Boeing B-17 is smashed by a bomb during the bombing of Berlin . All 11 crew members died in the crash.

Friendly fire (often English friendly fire or NATO -Soldaten blue on blue ) is mistaken shelling own or allied forces in an armed conflict.

A deliberate attack on members of your own troops, especially on superiors, is called fragging in the USA .

causes

Causes of self-fire are often insufficient identification of the target due to poor visibility conditions (such as darkness or weather conditions ), communication problems (such as wrong slogans ), technical or human error . The ballistic dispersion once played a role: if the gunners z. B. filled in a little less powder, the shot missile flew less. Even in World War I , soldiers were afraid of so-called “short-walkers”.

The effect of this misdirected fire is also referred to as accompanying damage or collateral damage.

In the combined arms battle , it was and still does happen that remote support from one's own units in direct contact with the enemy by means of artillery or combat aircraft also affects one's own forces. One can try to weigh up whether the losses of one's own units would not be even greater without this air or artillery support.

Historical examples

  • During the Wars of the Roses , the Battle of Barnet (1471) saw dramatic self-fire among Lancaster troops . An emblem of the standard of the Earl of Oxford , a silver star, was mistaken in the thick fog for the "Sun of York", a symbol of the enemy army of the House of York , whereupon the contingent was taken under fire by its own longbowmen.
  • May 3, 1863: The US Civil War during which was Battle of Chancellorsville of Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson , one of the most famous and profiliertesten commander of the South, accidentally fired on by their own troops and severely wounded. The general died a few days later from his injuries.
  • January 21, 1915: During the First World War, the German submarine SM U 22 mistakenly sank the German submarine SM U 7 with a torpedo shot off the Dutch coast . U 7 had not previously responded to U 22 identification calls . A survivor of U 7 was then rescued by U 22 , which cleared up the tragic error.
  • September 10, 1939: In the initial phase of World War II, the British submarine Triton mistakenly sank the British submarine Oxley by torpedo off the coast of Norway . The Oxley had previously not responded to identification calls three times. Two survivors, including the commander, were later rescued by the Triton , which helped clear up the tragedy.
  • At the Wikinger company in 1940, the German navy lost two destroyers and 578 crew members due to bombing by its own air force . The cause was insufficient communication between the air force and the navy about the operations being carried out.
  • June 8, 1942: During World War sank the Italian submarine Alagi before Cape Bon mistakenly belonging to secure an Italian North Africa convoys Italian destroyer Antoniotto Usodimare by torpedo. The submarine crew assumed they were facing an Allied convoy. 141 sailors went down with the destroyer.
  • In 1944, the 30th Infantry Division was involved in Operation Overlord . During Operation Cobra , she suffered 700 casualties from friendly fire within two days (see "Friendly Fire" during Operation Cobra )
  • August 8, 1944: During Operation Totalize , around 200 British bombers accidentally dropped their bomb load on parts of the 1st Polish Armored Division north of Caen as a result of signal errors . The division lost 55 vehicles to the misdirected attack and had 497 dead and wounded.
  • During the battle in the Huertgen Forest (1944/45) the attacking US artillery was often disoriented in the confusing terrain; many US Army soldiers died from friendly fire .
  • In the Vietnam War , 18% of the 58,220 US soldiers killed in Vietnam died from friendly fire . Many of the 153,303 wounded US soldiers were also injured as a result.
  • During Operation Desert Storm in the Second Gulf War (1991), 165 American and five British soldiers were shot at by fellow soldiers.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friendly Fire ( Wiktionary )
  2. ^ Matti Münch: Verdun: Myth and everyday life of a battle . Meidenbauer Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89975-578-7 , p. 265. limited preview in the Google book search
  3. ^ Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars . Urbes, Graefelfing 1998, p. 11.
  4. ↑ uboat.net
  5. ↑ wlb-stuttgart.de
  6. ↑ Janusz Piekałkiewicz : The Invasion. France 1944 . FA Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1994, p. 204.
  7. ↑ G. Heinen: The miracle of the Hürtgenwald . In: Die Welt , June 23, 2001
  8. ↑ Spencer C. Tucker (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War . 2011, p. 393.
  9. ^ Hannah Fischer, Kim Klarman, Mari-Jana Oboroceanu (eds.): American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics. Bibliogov, 2012, ISBN 978-1-288-41404-8 , p. 11.
  10. ↑ Iraq war . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed July 18, 2020]).
  11. ↑ High blood toll from “friendly fire” in Iraq | NZZ. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .