Bill Sykes' Newsletter from America.
(May 2002)
An ex-Brit gives his views-(without fear
or favor)---of the American Scene
Another friendly fire incident.
 Four
members of the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's
Canadian Light Infantry were killed and eight other Canadian
soldiers severely injured when an American F-16 fighter
dropped a 500 pound bomb on them during a live fire training
exercise near the southern city of Kandahar in Afghanistan.
The attack came as the United States pilot mistook the live
fire training exercise for an attack on his aircraft.
Initially the command control said that the pilot reported
that he was under fire from ground troops and requested
clearance to respond, which was denied. Later reports state
that two US F-16 aircraft notified their air traffic controller
and were given clearance to return fire.
Questions are being asked whether American Air National
Guard pilots, who are civilian reservists and generally
are called up to fly civilian planes, should be operating
as combat pilots in Afghanistan.
 Under
real war conditions, friendly fire is a common hazard for
infantry troops. For example during my service with British
Forces in World War Two, there were three separate occasions
when friendly fire could have caused my instant demise.
The first one came in the form of an American Thunderbolt
fighter, which strafed our small group of parachutists who
by accident had been dropped behind German lines in Normandy.
The second occasion, was after capture by the Germans we,
the prisoners, were locked in cattle cars in the Paris,
Gare du Norde railway sidings for several days, and the
sidings were bombed nightly, assumedly by our friends the
RAF.
The last occasion was when we, still locked in boxcars,
were enroute from Chalon Sur Marne to Limburgh/Muhlberg
Prisoner of War camps in Eastern Germany, which took several
weeks during which the trains were strafed by Allied aircraft
several times.
So you can see, air support can be deadly to people on
the ground if not stringently controlled.
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