Unlike in video games, you can't turn off friendly fire in real life,
and it's been a very real issue for as long as warfare has, only exacerbated by humanity's use
of projectile weapons and explosives. A friendly fire attack is an attack by a military force
on a friendly or neutral military force in what was meant to be an attack on an enemy.
An attack which wasn't meant for an enemy, a deliberate attack on a friendly force, or an
attack on civilians are not friendly fire attacks, at least in terms of calculating casualties.
Friendly fire attacks are often the result of identification and positional errors,
which are only exacerbated by poor communication, poor training, and unfavourable environments.
For instance, poor communication may result in a unit being somewhere they shouldn't, perhaps
behind enemy lines, leading them to be mistaken for the enemy and attacked by a friendly unit.
As another example, a soldier with poor training might freak out in combat and, in their confusion,
fire at a friendly soldier, thinking they are an enemy soldier. Lastly,
if a fog clings to a battlefield, a soldier might misidentify a friendly through the fog,
firing on them as if they were an enemy soldier, or if a soldier is
delirious from injury or disease, so too might they fire upon a friendly soldier.
World War II, with its meagre communications technology,
hastily trained military and paramilitary forces,
and slew of less than favourable terrains was a breeding ground for friendly fire. And what
makes it worse is the sheer number of human beings pitched into the gut of this voracious
conflict. In any conflict, it's estimated that between 2% and 20% of battle casualties
are caused by friendly fire. If some 25 million military personnel perished in World War II, then
between 500,000 and 5 million of them were killed by friendly fire. Yes, both of these figures vary
from source to source, but the implications are no less staggering, especially when you consider
that some forces may have underreported friendly fire for the purposes of morale.
Check your safety, guys, because, for the rest of this video, we're going
to look at some shocking instances of friendly fire in World War II.
Starting World War II with a bang, the only belligerents in the Battle of Barking Creek
were Britain and Britain. On the 6th of September 1939, Hawker Hurricanes from RAF 56 Squadron took
to the sky, responding to a false alarm regarding some unidentified aircraft over West Mersea,
Essex. Supermarine Spitfires from 54, 65, and 74 Squadrons followed suit,
scrambling from Hornchurch Airfield. None of these pilots had seen German aircraft in the sky before,
and communication between the pilots and ground control was poor.
On the command of Adolph "Sailor" Malan -- who we've covered in our two videos on the flying
aces of World War II -- 74 Squadron saw, in quotes, "German planes" and open fired,
downing two Hurricanes and killing one pilot. Following this, British AA-guns dropped one of
the Spitfire while it was returning to base. Two of the Spitfire pilots faced court-martial
but were exonerated on the grounds that the Battle of Barking Creek was a barking accident.
The German destroyer Z1 Leberecht Maass at least saw some action before she was unmade.
On the 22nd of February 1940, the destroyer was on the warpath when a German Heinkel He 111 bomber
mistook her and her destroyer companions for the enemy and dropped a bomb on her back,
splitting her in half and consigning 280 of her crew to a watery grave. Trying to rescue the crew,
of which only 60 survived, the destroyer Z3 Max Schultz hit a mine (possibly British) and sunk,
taking her entire crew of 308 to the depths with her. This absolute catastrophe
was the result of poor communication between the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe.
During the Burma Campaign, in the Defense of Rangoon,
the First American Volunteer Group of the Republic of China Air Force, nicknamed the
"Flying Tigers," mistook Allied ground troops for Japanese troops on the 21st of April 1942,
laying waste to them from the sky for a prolonged period and ending more than 100 friendly lives.
On the 27th of June 1942, British Vickers Wellington bombers delivered their payloads
upon the heads of the British 7th Armoured Division and British 3rd Hussars while
these ground units were trying to raid a German position near Mersa Matruh, a vital Egyptian port.
More than 359 Allied soldiers were killed in this misguided bombing, while 560 more were wounded.
The Germans watched the incident unfold, and in their confusion, started shooting at each other,
feeding more blood to the desert. One German soldier saw the carnage the following morning,
reporting "mangled corpses of New Zealanders killed by British bombs."
This example might stretch the definition of "friendly fire" a little, but here it is anyway.
During the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign or Operation Sei-go, which was fought between the 15th of
May and 4th of September 1942, the Japanese used biological weapons against the Chinese.
Their biological warfare unit (the infamous Unit 731) brought 135 kilos
or 300 pounds of anthrax and paratyphoid to the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in China,
intending to contaminate water and food. But it sort of backfired,
with 10,000 Japanese soldiers contracting the diseases and 1,700 perishing.
During the Allied invasion of Sicily, which was codenamed Operation Husky and
lasted from July through to August 1943, US paratroopers of the 504th
Parachute Infantry Regiment -- bolstered by the 76th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion,
a unit of the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, and some support units -- set out to reinforce
a captured port in 144 Douglas C-47 military transport craft. Unfortunately, they arrived
at the very same time as an Axis air raid, and Allied naval vessels started firing on them,
blasting 23 C-47s out of the sky, damaging 37, and inflicting 318 friendly fire casualties,
of which 83 were deaths. This particular operation was cancelled, but it did not so much affect the
Allied victory in Operation Husky, which led to the collapse of Mussolini's bald regime.
As part of Operation Crossbow, the RAF carried out Operation Hydra on the night of the 17th of August
1943, bombing Germany's Peenemünde Army Research Centre, where guided missile and rocket research
was undertaken. This was a double victory for the British, for when the Germans withdrew 100
night fighters to Berlin as a result of the Allied operation, Luftwaffe Bomber Command
mistook them for British aircraft detached from the raid on Peenemünde, popping three of their
own planes with AA guns. Hans Jeschonnek was the Luftwaffe general responsible for this mistake,
and he was found dead with a pistol and a suicide note after the reports of this incident came in.
The Japanese won the joint American-Canadian battle codenamed Operation Cottage without
actually participating it. On the 15th of August 1943, as a part of the Aleutian Islands campaign,
units of the US 7th Infantry Division and Canadian 6th Infantry Division invaded Kiska Island,
which was held by Japanese forces... but not really. In fact, the Japanese had abandoned
the island two weeks earlier, and the Americans and Canadians landed on opposite sides of it,
mistaking each other for the enemy and going toe to toe. As we've said in a previous video,
the Canadians are devils in war, and they shot dead 28 Americans for a loss of only four.
Other Allied soldiers lost their lives to mines and other traps left by the Japanese,
including one sea mine which blew a hole in the USS Abner Read, killing 71 and wounding 47.
An utter tragedy occurred on the Orvieto North railway bridge in Allerona, a commune in Italy,
on the 28th of June 1944, when a train carrying hundreds of Allied POWs,
who were being transported from "Camp. P.G. 54, Fara in Sabina," was struck by B-26 Marauders of
the US 320th Bombardment Group. The POWS were on their way to Germany, likely to another POW camp
or something worse, and when the bombs started to fall, the German troops guarding the train
abandoned it, leaving the POWs locked inside. Some managed to escape through holes in the boxcars,
breaking their fall in the river below, but more than 400 POWs were killed or wounded
in this incident of friendly fire, which was very likely the result of poor intel.
The 29th of April 1944 was a bad day for the US Navy. The patrol torpedo boat PT-350
was helping PT-347, which got stuck on a reef off New Britain Island in New Guinea, only for
both boats to be attacked by two American Corsair fighters who mistook them for Japanese gunboats.
But mistakes were made on both ends, and PT-350 shot back at the Corsairs, thinking them Japanese
Zeros and downing one of these "Zeros" into the sea. With dead and wounded on board, PT-350 had
no choice but to abandon PT-347 and return to base, after which PT-346 came to PT-347s aid,
only to get attacked by an entire squadron of Corsairs, Grumman TBF Avengers, Grumman F6F
Hellcats, and Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers, which had flown to the reef to avenge the Corsair
shot down by PT-350 earlier in the day. PT-346 and PT-357 were blown to pieces, and several
more sailors lost their lives. This incident was a result of poor communication and inexperienced
pilots, who hadn't had much experience distinguishing naval targets at this point.
So those were just ten examples of friendly fire in World War II among thousands. But what do you
think? Is there an example you want to share? Do you want to see a second video on friendly fire in
World War II? What about friendly fire in other conflicts? Please let us known in the comments.