Blue on Blue/Friendly Fire incidents.

[airminded88]

Curious things happens in those days indeed.

I've read about a Bf-109 (maybe inexperienced pilot) forming up on a flight of P-51s and, upon realizing he was among the wrong pack, thundered down in a powered dive getting away as quickly as possible.

 

[Glider]

8th Air force P51's which used to sweep for enemy aircraft after the escort had a reputation for shooting at almost anything in the sky. Spit, Typhoon, Tempest, P47 anything.
The 2TAF series have a number of examples. My personal favourite was a unit of P47s' that were about to be bounced by some Me 109's. Some Tempests intervened and their thanks was to be chased by the P47's who kept firing at long range without hitting a thing. Later the P47 unit was awarded 13 confirmed kills for the days work.

 

[OldSkeptic]

Bob Spurdle also wrote this about F/F;

"One of the wing's pilots painted a white star on his machine adding it to his string of swastikas. He was told to remove it.
The squadron commanders of the wings under A.V.M. Broadhurst's [2nd TAF] control were assembled at Eindhoven for a general briefing on future operations on the war's progress. the A.V.M., in passing told us that if our aircraft were subjected to anymore bouncing by our gallant allies, we could retaliate no enquiry or disciplinary action would be taken. An extraordinary scene followed - cheering, back-slapping, laughing pilots surrounded our popular commander.
We'd had more than enough of this sort of aggravation."

Yes the USAAF pilots had a bit of a bad reputation about that.
Time after time you read reports of Tiffies, Mossies, even Spits, etc being attacked by US planes in virtually every biography, autobiography and pilot accounts.

Part of that was poor training.
Part the reward system of the USAAF at the time. Pilots were desperate to become 'aces'.
Part sheer anglophobia (airbrushed out of history now) but a lot of Americans at the time (including Patton) thought they fighting on the wrong side.
Part poor operational control, why were US fighters in British areas at all, post D-Day they all had their designated areas?
Plus a bit of a slapdash attitude to non US losses.

Not just limited to airforces. Old, old story I remember from someone: British soldiers comment "when the Germans fire at us we duck, when we fire at them they duck, when the Americans fire we both duck".

 

[beitou]

Im a bit curious about the anglophobia that you mention Oldskeptic. It would be fair to say that there were tensions bitween the UK and US at many levels, also fair to say that individuals on both sides were not happy with the other or even felt they should have been neutralor fighting the wrong side. But it is a very big leap to somehow use this to account for FF incidents. Were the perpetartors deliberatley shooting down their allies, unlikely but it seems to be one conclusion that can be drawn. Were they doing it accidentaley then relishing the fact that they had killed allies or were they just not bothered. I really can't see what you are getting at by using Anlophobia to account for FF. A genuine question, can you give me more details of this?

 

[Wildcat]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6QdwpSRbuw
At 0:14 a RAAF Beaufort comes under AA fire.

 

[GrauGeist]

There were even some instances over Bulgarian skies where the Bulgarian pilots mistook the P-51B escorts as Bf109s, when the early Mustangs were assigned to escort the Allied bombers.

 

[GregP]

Think maybe you have a bit of USA-phobia, Oldskeptic.

 

[davebender]

Dozens of incidents where U.S. Army Air Corps bombed Allied ground troops. Some caused hundreds of friendly fire casualties.

Evidence suggests battleship U.S.S. Washington sank some of their own escorting DDs during a night battle off Guadalcanal.

 

[OldSkeptic]

Oh no its is not meant like that at all. Rather that the (well recorded) Anglophobia of some senior US officers probably contributed towards them not putting strong efforts into avoiding B on B incidents, obviously just not something they cared about much.
Not blaming the pilots so much as criticising the system and the senior officers.
Again and again in the literature you get many instances where complaints from the RAF were made to to the USAAF, but nothing was done. So by omission of strong action at the senior levels the problem ended up being far larger than it should have been.
There was always going to be some of course, but it definitely seems that it was far larger than it should have been.

I mean, what about the gun camera footage. In a fair few cases you'd expect it to show the pilot had made a rather serious mistake.
Taking strong action against the pilots on that basis alone would have made everyone far more careful.
But time and time again nothing was done.

If got so bad that 2nd TAF responded as it did, then it must have been pretty awful and far more common than we think today by reading the literature.
And long before that point there would have been many official (and unofficial) complaints, almost certainly to the highest levels.
Given that, then the USAAF senior people either were criminally incompetent or just didn't give a s@!t.

After Sept 44 when the armies got quite separated, pretty easy to give instructions not to engage any aircraft within certain areas and that anyone who broke that would be court marshaled.

 

[CobberKane]

Still sounds like a bit of the Stretch to me. Sure, there were some senior offices in the US forces who didn't like the Brits (who was that idiot in the USN who refused to adopt British convoy tactics and turned the Atlantic into a shooting gallery for German U-boats?) but if you want a model for pigheadedness you don't have to look any further than Montgomery. I find the idea that anyone was unofficially sanctioning FF incidents hard to swallow. IF (show me the numbers) the US pilots were any worse in this respect than others I suspect it was due to the sheer number of fired up young men desperately looking for something to shoot at.

 

[drgondog]

Oh no its is not meant like that at all. Rather that the (well recorded) Anglophobia of some senior US officers probably contributed towards them not putting strong efforts into avoiding B on B incidents, obviously just not something they cared about much.

Adm King comes to mind for 'Anglophobia', Patton comes to mind for 'Monte' phobia (as well as many English officers). What else do you have documented?

I have studied ETO airpower extensively and nothing I have seen regarding Anglophobia approaches USN vs USAAF - what do you have to present?

Not blaming the pilots so much as criticising the system and the senior officers.

Senior officers in 8th AF remembered RAF Spits doing the escorting for the first seven months of 8th AF ops. They sure weren't irritated at RAF. Which senior officers are you referring to and how did they influence 8th FC fighter pilots to whack RAF targets?

Again and again in the literature you get many instances where complaints from the RAF were made to to the USAAF, but nothing was done. So by omission of strong action at the senior levels the problem ended up being far larger than it should have been.
There was always going to be some of course, but it definitely seems that it was far larger than it should have been.

I mean, what about the gun camera footage. In a fair few cases you'd expect it to show the pilot had made a rather serious mistake.
Taking strong action against the pilots on that basis alone would have made everyone far more careful.
But time and time again nothing was done.

If got so bad that 2nd TAF responded as it did, then it must have been pretty awful and far more common than we think today by reading the literature.
And long before that point there would have been many official (and unofficial) complaints, almost certainly to the highest levels.
Given that, then the USAAF senior people either were criminally incompetent or just didn't give a s@!t.

After Sept 44 when the armies got quite separated, pretty easy to give instructions not to engage any aircraft within certain areas and that anyone who broke that would be court marshaled.

BS flag. Name the sources you think argue for criminal incompetency?

 

[davebender]

President FDR didn't like British Empire in general and particularly disliked PM Churchill for a perceived WWI era snub.

What does this have to do with friendly fire incidents?

 

[GregP]

You beat me to it Drgondog ... I was going to say that Patton didn't dislike the British at all ... but he detested Bernard Montgomery. I think a few British military people shared his dislike for the Field Marshall. Also, Patton was super-competitive and had no problems running over the careers of fellow US officers, either, as long as he came out on top. Good man to follow into battle and a bad man if you wound up in his crosshairs of displeasure.

Yes, we had some pro-German sympathizers, mostly, but not all, of German descent. They fasy found out they were back a cause that was rapidly becomming VERY unpopular and most were no longer pro-German after a short while, at least in public. Before the war the USA was largely isolationistic and it is inevitable that, before the Nazi crimes against humanity, they would have some supportes. It happens until the country declares war and something occurs to justify the decision in a BIG way /// like death camps, torture, unrestricted submarine warfare, etc.

If I am not mistaken, the Germans did not declare unrestriced submarine warfare until several of their U-boats were sunk by Q-Ships, armed and disguised as freighters. Once you equipment ships and people to deceptive tactics, it is rather natural to take steps to protect yourself ... but that wasn't widely publicised at the time. Only that the subs were sinking unarmed freighters.

 

[tyrodtom]

The Q-ships were a WW1 weapon, I doubt that there were many, if any, allied unarmed WW2 freighters.
Maybe just light AA in a lot of cases, but that's still considered armed.

 

[GregP]

Yah, I think it started the trend to sink merchant ships whether they were unarned or not, by surprise.

 

[OldSkeptic]

BS flag. Name the sources you think argue for criminal incompetency?

Post #9:

"Bob Spurdle also wrote this about F/F;

"One of the wing's pilots painted a white star on his machine adding it to his string of swastikas. He was told to remove it.
The squadron commanders of the wings under A.V.M. Broadhurst's [2nd TAF] control were assembled at Eindhoven for a general briefing on future operations on the war's progress. the A.V.M., in passing told us that if our aircraft were subjected to anymore bouncing by our gallant allies, we could retaliate no enquiry or disciplinary action would be taken. An extraordinary scene followed - cheering, back-slapping, laughing pilots surrounded our popular commander.
We'd had more than enough of this sort of aggravation.""

There is absolutely no way that someone of Broadhurst's rank, experience and (generally) good relationships with his US counterparts would say something like this, unless he had been provoked beyond any reasonable level and had absolutely no success through official or even unofficial channels.

There is another description for something getting this bad "total stupidity", but I prefer "criminal incompetence", after all people were dying because of it. It was obvious the pilots had more than enough.
Now the motivations for this level of incompetence can be speculated about, but I struggle to think of a better term for it.

Now the gun cameras of the US planes would have shown, in quite a few (maybe many) cases that it was a Spit, Tiffie, Mosquito, etc that had been shot at.
Why wasn't disciplinary action taken against those pilots? Obviously some people at higher levels were turning a blind eye.
After all, every claim was supposed to be backed by gun camera results.

At the Battle of Mortain, the TAF wouldn't agree to help out unless no US planes came anywhere near them. So the US tactical forces were kept well away to block any Luftwaffe attempts.
That was a sensible measure that, if applied elsewhere, could have prevented a lot of problems, so why not?
Unlike in Normandy they were well separated by this time, there was no reason for any US TAC air, or escorts returning from escort missions, to be in the area at all.

If they were US TAC air they weren't doing their job of looking after their own troops, which means they were well out of their normal operational areas, which again should have meant disciplinary action.
If they were escorts returning they should have had clear instructions to avoid certain areas.

 

[Glider]

I think its a mistake to view this as an RAF vs USAAF issue. The USAAF 9th airforce were just as ticked off by being attacked by 8th air force fighters. There are well documented examples of RAF vs RAF friendly fire incidents and no doubt 8th airforce vs 8th airforce and Luft vs Luft incidents as well.

Re the 2TAF their orders were to evade if at all possible and not to shoot back. However there is the 'if at all possible'. If for example I was in a Typhoon and saw a P51 on the tail of another Typhoon who couldn't get away, then I would shoot, no question. However I would do the same if it was a Spit and no one would blame me. The life of a friend and comrade trumps the life of (in my eyes) an idiot every time.

I read of one example of a P51 attacking a SPit and the SPit was easily able to avoid getting hit, but the P51 jockey didn't get the message and continued trying. In the end the RAF pilot got so irritated he got onto the tail of the P51 and let fly with the 303 not the 20mm, then and only then did the P51 get out of the area. Could the 303 shoot down the P51, possibly yes but probably not, do I consider the P51 pilot lucky that the Spit didn't just let him have it with everything, yes.

 

[Wildcat]

Scratch one Boomerang!
Photo from Jack Cook via Wings Over New Zealand - P38 Kill markings

 

[OldSkeptic]

Yes, even today blue on blue is an issue (eg Iraq war1 .. and quite a few others since then).
But good procedures, training and rules (plus public kicking of those who break those rules) will minimise those. Technology helps but is not, in itself, a solution.

I never blame the individuals who stuff up , I look at the system (like quality control) Why does it condone (or at its worst) encourage stuff ups?

 

[drgondog]

Post #9:

"Bob Spurdle also wrote this about F/F;

"One of the wing's pilots painted a white star on his machine adding it to his string of swastikas. He was told to remove it.
The squadron commanders of the wings under A.V.M. Broadhurst's [2nd TAF] control were assembled at Eindhoven for a general briefing on future operations on the war's progress. the A.V.M., in passing told us that if our aircraft were subjected to anymore bouncing by our gallant allies, we could retaliate no enquiry or disciplinary action would be taken. An extraordinary scene followed - cheering, back-slapping, laughing pilots surrounded our popular commander.
We'd had more than enough of this sort of aggravation.""

There is absolutely no way that someone of Broadhurst's rank, experience and (generally) good relationships with his US counterparts would say something like this, unless he had been provoked beyond any reasonable level and had absolutely no success through official or even unofficial channels.

There is another description for something getting this bad "total stupidity", but I prefer "criminal incompetence", after all people were dying because of it. It was obvious the pilots had more than enough.
Now the motivations for this level of incompetence can be speculated about, but I struggle to think of a better term for it.

Now the gun cameras of the US planes would have shown, in quite a few (maybe many) cases that it was a Spit, Tiffie, Mosquito, etc that had been shot at.
Why wasn't disciplinary action taken against those pilots? Obviously some people at higher levels were turning a blind eye.
After all, every claim was supposed to be backed by gun camera results.

Repeat again -"Senior officers in 8th AF remembered RAF Spits doing the escorting for the first seven months of 8th AF ops. They sure weren't irritated at RAF. Which senior officers are you referring to and how did they influence 8th FC fighter pilots to whack RAF targets?"
At the Battle of Mortain, the TAF wouldn't agree to help out unless no US planes came anywhere near them. So the US tactical forces were kept well away to block any Luftwaffe attempts.
That was a sensible measure that, if applied elsewhere, could have prevented a lot of problems, so why not?
Unlike in Normandy they were well separated by this time, there was no reason for any US TAC air, or escorts returning from escort missions, to be in the area at all.

If they were US TAC air they weren't doing their job of looking after their own troops, which means they were well out of their normal operational areas, which again should have meant disciplinary action.
If they were escorts returning they should have had clear instructions to avoid certain areas.

There is a great gulf between what you theorize and actual and positive malice as you claim.

Repeat - which officers in the USAAF in ETO a.) had malice toward RAF, b.) intentionally ignored these incidents ?