DID YOU KNOW

[Gil Boyd]

Sorry Guys for the amount on this thread entry, but some of these need documenting and reading to fully understand what occurred just in WW2.
Tales of similar in wars since including Iraq and Afghanistan, I'll leave to some one else to tell, but sadly they occur and part of war in "Man's inhumanity to man".

S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive)

The S.O.E. was formed in July, 1940, on Churchill's orders to "Set Europe Ablaze." With headquarters at 64, Baker Street, London, its first recruits were originally from the armed forces but later both men and women were recruited from the civilian sector. Speaking a foreign language, especially French, was essential before being passed on to Military Intelligence for a security check. Training courses included Parachute and First Aid training at Ringwood airfield near Manchester followed by four weeks Radio and Cipher training. Physical Fitness, small arms and map reading, were conducted in the Western Highlands of Scotland where all forms of Commando and clandestine warfare were also taught. Among many of its famous secret agents were Violet Szabo and Odette Sansom. Of the 418 SOE agents sent to Europe, 118 failed to return. Only one plane, a Lysander of 161 squadron and its pilot, F/O James Bathgate of New Zealand, were lost in the French operation. In the town of Valencay, 50 kms south of Blois in central France, a memorial bearing the names of 91 men and 13 women agents of S.O.Es 'F' Section under Major Maurice Buckmaster, who from 1932 to 1936 had been General Manager of the French Ford Motor Company, are commemorated. It was inaugurated on May 6, 1991, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. In 1946 the SOE was dissolved, its wartime role completed.

(Because of the rivalries and jealousies between SOE, SIS and other Military Intelligence units, the operations of SOE were doomed from the start. Its record was one of the poorest of the whole war, its achievements being outweighed by its many disasters ie. the collapse of the vast Prosper and Scientist networks in France. The lives it wasted, especially in Holland, the money and time it cost makes it one of the most tragic Secret Service organisation ever mounted.) Nevertheless, General Eisenhower, said the French section of SOE had contributed significantly to shortening the war by several months.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Disaster off Norway)

Only a week after the war broke out, the British submarine Oxley was patrolling off the coast of Norway along with her sister ship HMS Triton. Somehow the Oxley had sailed into the sector patrolled by Triton. The Commander of the Triton, Lt. Cdmr. Steel, sighted an unidentified submarine on the surface and when challenged received no reply. Assuming the other submarine to be hostile, he ordered two torpedoes to be fired. The unidentified submarine disappeared, leaving three survivors swimming towards the Triton but one of the swimmers was seen to sink below the water and disappear. One can only imagine the shock the Triton's crew experienced when they pulled the Oxley's Commander, Lt. Cdmr. Bowerman and one other survivor, Able Seaman Gluckes, out of the water. They happened to be standing on the bridge when the torpedo hit. Fifty-three of Oxley's crew perished. Apparently the Oxley's signal answering apparatus had malfunctioned and failed to answer in time. Families were notified that the Oxley was accidentally rammed by the Triton and it was not until the 1950s that they were informed that the loss was due to friendly fire. Its a sad fact that the first British submarine torpedo to explode on target, sank a sister ship. The Oxley was the first submarine to be lost in the war.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Greenock, Scotland)

On April 28, 1940, the 2,400 ton French destroyer Maillé Brézé, became a victim of its own weaponry when one of its own torpedoes accidentally fired and slithered along the main deck exploding under the bridge structure and completely wrecking the forepart of the ship. The British destroyer HMS Firedrake, rushed to the scene and rescued fifteen men who had slid down the hawse pipe. Other mangled bodies were recovered but those on the mess deck were doomed as the ship slowly sank taking with her 38 of her crew still trapped below.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Pearl Harbor)

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, US army personnel started digging trenches along the beaches in anticipation of a seaborne invasion. Every fifty feet or so along the beach, a gun crew with 30 calibre machine guns took up their positions. At around 8pm on December 7th, seven planes were seen trying to land on an airstrip on Ford Island. Misjudging the length of the runway the pilots decided to go around again for a second try. As the planes came around again the gunners, thinking they were Japanese, opened fire and shot down all seven. The planes were their own aircraft from the carrier USS Enterprise out at sea.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Italy)

The first major 'Friendly Fire' incident in the European Theatre was on March 15, 1944, when 435 Allied bombers attacked the area around the town of Cassino in Italy. Bombs fell short on Allied troops and Italian civilians, killing 28 and wounding 114. At the same time, some ten miles away, in the town of Venafro, 28 Allied soldiers and civilians were killed and 179 wounded by misplaced bombs.

FRIENDLY FIRE (D Day-June 6, 1944)

At sunset on D-Day, forty DC3s from 233 Squadron RAF, crossed the English Channel carrying 116 tons of ammunition, spares and petrol for the 6th Airborne Division. As the planes passed over the warships off the mouth of the Oren river, trigger happy gunners on the ships opened fire. Two planes were forced to turn back with severe damage, one ditched in the sea and five went missing believed shot down. Fourteen others were damaged. The end result was that only twenty-five tons of supplies were recovered. In future, all operations of this nature were carried out only during daylight hours.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Sicily)

On July 11, 1943, on the American held airfield at Farrell, three miles east of Gela in Sicily, preparations were under way for the reception of reinforcements from Colonel Reuben H. Tucker's 504th Parachute Regiment. As the C-47 transports approached the bridgehead and headed for the drop zone, an American machine-gun down below fired a stream of tracers upward at the C-47s. A second machine-gun opened up followed by another and still another. Directly into this storm of 'friendly fire' flew the C-47s. As plane after plane was hit, the paratroopers jumped only to be shot in mid-air or just before they landed. The trigger-happy machine-gunners, thinking they were German paratroops, kept up their deadly fire while General George Patton and General Matthew Ridgeway, the 82nd Airborne commander, awaiting to greet the paratroopers, could only look on with shocked disbelief as the tragedy unfolded before their eyes. Altogether, twenty three of the original 144 troop carrying planes were shot down and thirty-seven others badly damaged. Ninety-seven men were killed and around 400 were wounded in this, the greatest tragedy to befall the US invasion forces. A total of 2,440 US soldiers died in the battle for Sicily and are now buried in the American Cemetery on the Gulf of Salerno. The battle for Sicily (Operation Husky) involved a total of 467,000 men. The Allied forces lost 5,532 men killed and 2,869 missing. German dead amounted to 4,325 and the Italian dead, 4,278.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Aleutian Islands)

On August 15-16, 1943, a force of 35,000 American troops invaded the island of Kiska in the Aleutians. Most of these troops had not seen combat before but expected fanatical enemy resistance. Heavy fog had descended on the island and by nightfall 28 soldiers were dead and around 50 wounded, shot by their own comrades who were shooting at anything that moved in the fog. (Only four Canadians were killed and four wounded) The irony was that not a single Japanese soldier was on the island, all having been evacuated before the invasion began. Four of the American dead were killed by stepping on land mines left behind by the Japanese.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Solomon Islands)

When out on a pre-dawn patrol on April 29, 1944, off the island of New Britain in the Solomon Islands, the Patrol Boat P-347 commanded by Lt. Robert J. Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, runs up onto a reef in Lassul Bay. Patrol Boat P-350 attempts to tow the P-347 off the reef but while doing so both boats were strafed by US Corsairs whose pilots mistook them for enemy gun boats. Soon, another Patrol Boat, P-346 appeared on the scene to assist in the tow but more planes made their appearance and began their strafing run in spite of the crew of the P-346 waving the Stars and Stripes. The Patrol Boats opened fire and shot down two of the planes. One bomb made a direct hit on the P-347 just after the crew had abandoned ship. The planes continued strafing the men in the water before heading back to base. On the boats involved in this tragic incident, fourteen men were killed, another fourteen wounded and two pilots lost.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Anzio)

On May 26, 1944, the beachhead at Anzio/Nettuno ceased to exist. It had now become a bridgehead. British and American troops had broken out and were pushing forward to cut the retreat of Kesselring's forces on Route 6, the main highway leading to Rome. A few minutes after noon on the 26th on the outskirts of Cori, a squadron of five American P-40 fighter-bombers of the 99th Fighter Group, US 12th Air Force, flew over the Anzio/Nettuno area, turned back and prepared for a strafing run. Soldiers of the US 15th Infantry froze in terror as bombs started falling in their midst. Within seconds, 120 men were either dead or wounded. The 2nd Battalion of the 15th Infantry, US 3rd Division, suffered seventy-two casualties. A number of bombs hit their jeeps which were loaded with ammunition and the exploding 37mm anti-tank shells caused additional casualties; some of the bodies were never found. This held up the advance to Giuglianello for five to six hours. A week later, headlines in the 'Stars and Stripes' proclaimed "American troops at Anzio bombed by Germans flying American planes". This incident has been covered up for over fifty years, the 12th Air Force never having admitted its error. One of the many witnesses to this tragedy was ex-Corporal Robert Steele, of Cannon Company, 15th Infantry Regiment, who now lives in Columbus, Georgia.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Italy)

On April 29, 1944, a group of American P-47 Thunderbolt fighters mistakenly strafed the airstrip at Cutella on Italy's Adriatic coast, the pilots thinking that it was a Luftwaffe airfield. The airstrip was a base for the Royal Australian Air Force 239 Wing which included 3 and 450 Squadrons. One 3 Squadron Kittyhawk fighter was destroyed and three more damaged. Human casualties were one pilot of an Air Sea Rescue Walrus float plane killed and a few other ground personnel wounded. Tragedy was to strike again next day when a pilot of one of the attacking Thunderbolts, realizing a mistake had been made, flew to the airstrip to apologize. Unfortunately he was killed when his plane crashed when taking off to return home.

FRIENDLY FIRE (Normandy)

On July 24, 1944, 300 US planes dropped a total of 550 tons of bombs on the St. Lo front. It was during 'Operation Cobra' (The breakthrough from St Lo) that the most devastating incident of Friendly Fire occurred. Some of the bombs fell short upon the 30th Infantry Division (Old Hickory) killing 25 men and wounding 131. Next day, the Americans flung in 140,000 shells while 2,730 planes dropped 3,300 tons of bombs and napalm canisters into an area 7,000 long by 2,500 yards wide. The bomb loads of 35 heavy bombers and 42 medium bombers again fell upon the 30th Infantry Division. In this second disaster in two days, the bombing killed a further 111 men and wounded 490. The 30th Division alone suffered 662 casualties from friendly bombing on 25 July: 64 killed, 374 wounded, 60 missing. There was also 164 cases of combat fatigue induced by the stunning effects of the heavy bombardment. Among the casualties in this second disaster was General Lesley J. McNair, Commanding General of US Army Ground Forces. He had flown over from England as an observer to the raid taking place. He was the most senior American General to be killed in the Second World War. His grave can be found in the US Military Cemetery above Omaha Beach in Normandy. This is one of the fourteen permanent WWII military cemeteries that the USA built on foreign soil. In the 172 acre site lie the remains of four women and buried side by side are a father and son as well as thirty-three pairs of brothers. The cemetery contains a total of 9,386 graves. (It is estimated that about 15,480 Americans, fell victim to Friendly Fire in World War II)