Introduction

The number of antiaircraft amicicide incidents uncovered in the course of this study was unexpectedly small. Only fifteen specific incidents were identified, although it would appear that the engagement of friendly aircraft by friendly antiaircraft weapons was probably much more common in past conflicts than the surviving data seem to suggest. Nevertheless, antiaircraft amicicide appears to be a relatively insignificant problem when compared to the other types in terms of frequency and human casualties.

With one exception all of the antiaircraft amicicide incidents examined in this study occurred in the Second World War. It should be noted that both aircraft and antiaircraft weapons and their associated identification and safety systems were much more primitive than are those in use today. The comparatively short range of World War II antiaircraft artillery, for example, usually required a visual sighting of the target before engagement. The slower speed of airplanes and the shorter range and lesser destructive power of antiaircraft weapons no doubt served to reduce the number of incidents due to misidentification and to attenuate the effects when they did occur. Then, too, in Korea and Vietnam our forces enjoyed near total air superiority and friendly antiaircraft artillery activity was reduced accordingly. Such may not be the case in future war where the almost instantaneous acquisition, identification, and engagement of high-speed targets at long range will be the rule rather than the exception. Visual sightings will probably be rare if not absent altogether, and the burden will be placed on electronic systems. Such systems proved of great value in World War II, and present and future systems may thus serve to reduce in part the effects of that most common cause of antiaircraft amicicide, human error.

Although in this area technology may be of great value, it cannot bear the burden alone. Training and experience will also be key components of any solution.

World War II: North Africa and Sicily

In view of the greenness of both American ground troops and aircrews it is truly surprising that so few incidents of antiaircraft amicicide during the North African campaign in 1942-43 have been recorded in the published record. The official US Army and US Air Force histories of the North African campaign, for example, mention only two incidents worthy of note.

On 20 February 1943 German forces broke through the American positions at the Kasserine Pass and precipitated a confused and desperate fighting withdrawal of the defeated American forces. Despite rain and fog on 21 February, fighter-bombers of the XII Air Support Command, based at Youk-les-Bains, attempted to assist friendly ground troops in blocking the enemy advance toward Thala and Tebessa. The cooperation of Allied aircraft with CCB, lst Armored Division, on 21 February was marred by American antiaircraft fire that damaged five American planes beyond repair and turned back two friendly air missions. [1]

The next day friendly antiaircraft guns shot up five American P-38s despite their distinctive double fuselage and specific instructions to ground troops to be alert for low- flying friendly aircraft over friendly positions. The American planes were also instructed to rock their wings as they flew over friendly positions, and the attention of ground troops was called to the dark noses of American planes in contrast to the yellow or white ones of the enemy.

In view of the distinctive shape and marking of the American planes and specific instructions to ground forces to expect them, the loss of aircraft to friendly antiaircraft fire on 21-22 February cannot be attributed to mistaken identification. Lack of training and fire discipline on the part of American ground troops coupled with the confusion and nervousness caused by the German breakthrough and subsequent withdrawal are more likely causes of these incidents. To preclude such incidents the commander of the XII Air Support Command issued an order that prohibited ground troops from firing on any aircraft until after it had attacked.

The number of incidents in North Africa in which ground troops fired on their own planes was apparently much larger than the few noted incidents would suggest. General references to the problem of antiaircraft amicicide occur elsewhere in the records of the North African campaign, and at least one observer noted that such incidents could be attributed to the lack of uniform policy for both ground and air units regarding the engagement of aircraft by ground fire. [2]

Such policy eventually evolved but did not become effective before the most tragic antiaircraft amicicide incident of the war occurred.

On the morning of 11 July 1943 Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., ordered the reinforcement of the Allied beachhead at Gela, Sicily, by more than 2,000 men of the lst and 2d Battalions, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment; the 376th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion; and Company C, 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion. [3]

The paratroopers were scheduled to be dropped by 144 aircraft of the US 52d Troop Carrier Wing on a drop zone in the Gela-Farello area at 2245 on 11 July. Because the weather was good and the approach was over friendly territory, an easy operation was expected. Ground commanders on Sicily were notified to expect the drop, and naval vessels of the invasion fleet off the coast of Sicily were alerted.

The airborne force departed from Tunisian airfields at 1900, and its flight was uneventful except for some light antiaircraft fire from Allied ships north of Malta, which caused no damage. Hitting the Sicilian coast the troop carriers turned to the northwest, flying along a two-mile wide corridor at an altitude of 1,000 feet over friendly lines. The lead elements jumped five minutes ahead of schedule, but as the second flight neared the final checkpoint a lone machine gun began firing.

Suddenly every Allied antiaircraft gun on shore and on the naval vessels offshore began firing at the slow, vulnerable troop carrier aircraft. Control over both Army and Navy antiaircraft gunners vanished. Even the crews of tanks took the hapless troop carriers under fire with their .50-caliber machine guns.

The commander of the 504th's Headquarters Company, Capt. Adam A. Komosa, later recalled: "It was the most uncomfortable feeling knowing that our own troops were throwing everything they had at us. Planes dropped out of formation and crashed into the sea. Others, like clumsy whales, wheeled and attempted to get beyond the flak which rose in fountains of fire, lighting the stricken faces of men as they stared through the windows." [4]

Several planes were hit before they could drop their paratroopers and others attempted to escape by turning out to sea. The paratroopers managed to jump from some planes before they were hit, but they were widely scattered, and some were shot at in their chutes and even on the ground. The planes attempting to escape the maelstrom suffered heavily from the antiaircraft fire of the naval vessels off the coast. The destroyer Beatty fired on a ditched airplane for several seconds with 20-mm guns before recognizing it as American and dispatching a boat to pick up survivors.

One pilot who survived stated with justifiable irony, "Evidently the safest place for us tonight while over Sicily would have been over enemy territory." [5]

In short, the operation was a total disaster. By the afternoon of 12 July Col. Reuben H. Tucker, the commander of the 504th Regimental Combat Team, could count as effective only 37 officers and 518 men of his 2,000-man force. In all, the paratroopers suffered casualties of 81 dead, 132 wounded, and 16 missing, and the 52d Troop Carrier Wing reported 7 dead, 30 wounded, and 53 missing and a 16 percent loss of aircraft (23 destroyed and 57 badly damaged). Friendly fire had caused 319 casualties and totally disrupted the operation.

A thorough investigation of the incident was quickly ordered by General Eisenhower, but the board of officers appointed to investigate the tragedy was unable to reach any definite conclusions as to its causes. In the end, a lack of training and discipline on the part of both ground and naval antiaircraft crews was probably the primary factor. Some ground and naval units professed never to have received the warning regarding the drop, and thus a portion of the catastrophe must be attributed to a failure in coordination.

In a 2 August 1943 letter, Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, the commander of the 82d Airborne Division, elegantly concluded: "The responsibility for the loss of life and material resulting from this operation is so divided, so difficult to fix with impartial justice, and so questionable of ultimate value to the service because of the acrimonious debates which would follow efforts to hold responsible persons or services to account, that disciplinary action is of doubtful wisdom.

Deplorable as is the loss of life which occurred, I believe that the lessons now learned could have been driven home in no other way, and that these lessons provided a sound basis for the belief that recurrences can be avoided.

The losses are part of the inevitable price of war in human life." [6]

The furor caused by the tragic amicicide incident at Gela did not preclude the occurrence of an almost identical incident in the British zone on the east coast of Sicily only two nights later.

A British airborne assault to seize the Primosole Bridge over the Simeto River and the establishment of a bridgehead on the river's north bank as a prelude to a breakthrough to Catania seven miles to the north was mounted on the night of 13 July 1943. Operation FUSTIAN was successful in the end but was nearly aborted by friendly antiaircraft fire. The American and British troop carrier aircraft loaded with 1,900 men of the British 1st Parachute Brigade encountered heavy antiaircraft fire from Allied ships off the southeastern coast of Sicily. [7]

The fire intensified as the air column neared the Sicilian coast. More than half the planes reported receiving fire from friendly naval vessels off Cape Passaro, and additional damage was caused by both friendly and enemy antiaircraft batteries once the planes were over Sicily. [8]

Only thirty-nine out of the eightyseven planes that got through the fire managed to drop their paratroopers within a mile of the four designated drop zones, and four planes dropped their parachutists twenty miles away on the slopes of Mount Etna. [9]

The margin of victory in Operation FUSTIAN was extremely narrow, in part because of the uncoordinated and illcontrolled friendly antiaircraft fire. Of the 124 planes on the mission, 11 were destroyed, 50 were damaged by friendly fire, and another 27 were forced to return to base with full or partial loads. [10]

In all, only about 300 men and three antitank guns reached the Primosole Bridge, which they captured intact nevertheless. [11]

The disastrous airborne operations on Sicily nearly spelled an end for Allied airborne operations in the European theater. Only three of the four major airborne drops in Sicily could be rated as tactical successes, and none was satisfactory from a technical or operational viewpoint. [12]

Of 666 troop carrier sorties flown, 42 aircraft were destroyed, at least 34 (or 5 percent) of them by friendly naval and ground antiaircraft fire, and only 40 percent of the 5,000 paratroopers dropped had landed near their assigned drop zones. [13]

Investigations and analyses concluded, however, that airborne assaults were a viable tactical tool, provided there were centralized early planning and continued close coordination of air, naval, and ground forces; adequate safeguards to keep aircraft away from friendly naval vessels; and better training for all units in navigation, recognition, and fire discipline. [14]

The improvements generated by the unsuccessful drops on Sicily paved the way for larger and more successful airborne operations in Italy, Normandy, and southern France.

The troop carriers and paratroopers were not the only victims of friendly antiaircraft fire on Sicily. Still green American ground troops continued throughout the Sicilian campaign to engage their own airplanes. As one corporal of an armored field artillery battalion put it, "Every plane that comes over us was fired upon because we could not identify it." [15]

Some such incidents might be ascribed more to righteous indignation than to misidentification. lst Lt. R. F. Hood of the 86th Fighter-Bomber Group, for instance, was shot down by antiaircraft fire of CCA, 2d Armored Division, after failing to observe the tankers' yellow smoke recognition signals. [16]

The basic problems of training and experience would be resolved in time, but Allied pilots and aircrews paid in the meantime.

World War II: The Pacific

Reports of antiaircraft amicicide incidents from the Pacific Theater of Operations in World War II are somewhat more plentiful than those from the European and Mediterranean theaters. Fortunately, however, there were no major incidents of the type experienced over Sicily. Nevertheless, fighter and bomber pilots in the Pacific also took a beating from friendly antiaircraft fire, both naval and ground-based.

Amphibious landings, frequently opposed by heavy concentrations of Japanese aircraft, were the setting for most of the incidents reported from the Pacific. The amphibious assault accompanied by heavy naval and ground-based air support was the characteristic tactical operation of the Pacific war and was also the scene of great confusion and activity. The Arawe-Cape Gloucester (New Britain) invasion of late 1943 was typical. The secondary attack, against Arawe, began on 15 December 1943. In the next twenty-three days the two Army 40-mm antiaircraft artillery batteries on Arawe were credited with shooting down eight Japanese planes and one American P-47. [17]

The main landing on Cape Gloucester took place on 26 December 1943. Between 1430 and 1510 on D-Day the expected Japanese air attack on the beachhead took place, involving twenty-five Japanese Navy Val dive bombers escorted by thirty to sixty fighters. There were eighty-one Allied fighters in the area, and in the ensuing fifteen-minute aerial combat the Japanese lost twenty-two dive bombers and probably more than twenty-four fighters. [18]

Antiaircraft fire from the Allied naval vessels and deck-loaded Marine 40-mm, 20-mm, and .50-caliber machine guns accounted for one Japanese dive bomber but also brought down two American B-25s and seriously damaged two others, killing at least one man. [19]

The confusion of the Japanese attack and the great number of aircraft (more than 150) in the confined air space over the beachhead account for the mistaken hits. The Vals made their attack just as the B-25s were going in to strafe Hill 250 and in fact the Vals flew through the B-25 formation. [20]

A few minutes after the B-25 engagement, a P-39 was ineffectively engaged by one 20-mm gun. In both cases the commander of the air task force stated the fault was clearly that of his airmen. [21]

In any case the Allied antiaircraft gunners cannot be condemned too severely in view of the obvious confusion and fear in which the incidents took place.

At 1715 the same day fifteen Japanese Betty torpedo bombers attempted to attack an LST convoy but were intercepted by twenty-six P-47s from the 341st and 342d Fighter Squadrons, which downed all of the Bettys and two Japanese fighters. One P-47 of the 342d Fighter Squadron, however, was shot down by antiaircraft fire from the friendly ships. [22]

Later in the operation, during the hours of darkness, an Allied B-24 not showing identification friend/foe (IFF) approached the beachhead area about an hour after a Japanese attack and was promptly illuminated and engaged. Fortunately, the pilot started evasive action as soon as he was illuminated, and his plane and crew escaped injury. A night fighter in the area was also driven from its base by friendly antiaircraft fire and crash-landed elsewhere. [23]

Although the coordination of air, naval, and ground forces in the Cape Gloucester operation was found in retrospect to be quite satisfactory, the incidents of antiaircraft amicicide revealed the need for additional recognition and fire discipline training for both naval and ground antiaircraft gunners and aircrews. [24]

The Navy antiaircraft gun crews in particular were found to fire on "anything that was not a P-38." [25]

Army antiaircraft artillery commanders also admitted that "after two years of war we frequently fail to distinguish between friend and foe" and noted that reliance on visual recognition alone would not solve the problem. [26]

Fortunately, additional training and experience proved successful in reducing, but not in eliminating, such incidents in future operations. [27]

On the day (27 May 1944) of the landings at Bosnek (Biak, New Guinea), friendly antiaircraft gunners, trigger happy from Japanese attacks, made direct air support by light and medium bombers from the 17th Reconnaissance Squadron (B- 25s) and 3d Bombardment Group (A-20s) hazardous.

On 28 May a 17th Reconnaissance Squadron B-25, cleared to drop its photographs on the beachhead, was shot down by friendly fire. Similar instances probably continued to occur until the end of the campaign in the Pacific but have gone unrecorded. Additional training and experience of both aircrews and antiaircraft gunners as well as the development of better technical aids and coordination procedures did, however, reduce the frequency of such incidents and prevent any repetition of the disastrous Sicilian turkey shoot.

Vietnam

Near total Allied air superiority over South Vietnam and the consequent absence of heavy concentrations of friendly antiaircraft weapons precluded significant incidents of antiaircraft amicicide during the Vietnam War. Unlike their fathers in North Africa, Sicily, and the Pacific in World War II, American ground combat troops in Vietnam came to assume that any aircraft overhead, either fixed or rotary wing, was friendly.

Only one instance of friendly fire on a friendly aircraft was noted in the survey of Vietnam amicicide conducted at the US Army Command and General Staff College in January 1980. In 1971, an American UH-1H helicopter from the 21st Assault Helicopter Company was shot down at night by American infantry at Fire Support Base Mary Ann near Chu Lai. The troops at FSB Mary Ann engaged the helicopter (probably on a lark resulting from indiscipline), which returned fire before being destroyed in a crash landing. Fortunately, the helicopter crew escaped injury.

Conclusion

The number of recorded incidents of antiaircraft amicicide has been small and, with the exception of the tragic airborne operations in Sicily, the loss of life, injury, and degradation of combat power resulting from such incidents have been minuscule (see table 4).

Here, more than in the case of artillery, air, or ground amicicide, technological aids for the positive identification of friendly forces have worked to keep the number of incidents and casualties low. The most common cause of incidents of antiaircraft amicicide seems to have been the lack of training and fire discipline combined with the usual confusion of active combat operations. Seven of the fifteen incidents discussed can be attributed to that cause. Five other incidents had as their primary cause a lack of adequate coordination and foresight between air and ground planners.

In only three incidents could the cause be identified as misidentification of friendly for enemy aircraft. There were no cases noted involving mechanical malfunctions. Thus, just as in the case of artillery and air amicicide, the basic cause is intimately connected with the human element rather than with mechanical malfunction or the presence or absence of technological identification systems. Visibility and the type of operation, air or ground, do not appear to be significant factors. Training, experience, and the development of better planning and coordination procedures thus appear to be the most efficacious solutions.

Although the almost complete absence of an enemy air threat in Korea and Vietnam served to arbitrarily reduce the number of incidents to almost nil, some credit for the favorable record in those conflicts must also be given to the development in and after World War II of adequate air- groundnaval coordination procedures and improved technological aids. The experience of Korea and Vietnam, however, should not deceive us with regard to the future probability of serious incidents of antiaircraft amicicide.

Any future conflict in which US forces are involved, especially one in Central Europe, will involve an enemy active in the air and hitherto unseen numbers of very destructive antiaircraft missiles and guns. In such a conflict a lack of training, experience, or coordination will likely produce the same unwanted results as they did in World War II: friendly aircrews and planes destroyed by friendly antiaircraft fire.