Dont want to start a massive fight between pro and anti-war people, but for those that are interested, the radio comms and the HUD cam video is here:

It's about 15 minutes long

http://www.thesun.co.uk

Direct link to the article in question ...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007060131,00.html

Edit: Had a look. Horrible. Then again, any war is a loss and can never be won.

i cant watch the vid for some reason

Sad thing that happened there! Should have been avoided

Quote from jamesrowe :

Stupid Americansillepall

Don't generalise, we've plenty of our neighbours across the pond in our community.

There's more to it than that.

You Can justify that they kept asking their base if they were friendlys are not, and their base gave them permission to fire.

Aire Pilots dont fire without permission first, i see no reason why its the pilots fault..

Its not the pilots fault, they asked if friendlies were in the area before firing. For all they knew the Iraqis had learnt about the orange markings, I mean they are running about in the latest American and British uniforms so why not paint a couple of their pickups.

Don't generalise either, most Americans are anti-war pro enviroment...its just the president who is the problem. How he can justify a 10% increase in military funding, while cutting health care, I have no idea.

Christ... goosebumps stuff... head to toes... damn...

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Its not the pilots fault, they asked if friendlies were in the area before firing. For all they knew the Iraqis had learnt about the orange markings, I mean they are running about in the latest American and British uniforms so why not paint a couple of their pickups.

I have to agree with that, the pilot asked a number of times whether they had any friendlies in the area, and he was told by the air traffic control "no, area is clear" when you are working in the army it is a team effort and you rely on people havily (especially pilots) so when someones tells you area is clear you have to believe it is clear. For me it was the air traffic controlers fault, pilot only did what he was told. But i guess in any line of work mistakes will happen especially when you are at war.

It is sad what happened.

Quote from jamesrowe :

Stupid Americansillepall

Please excuse this idiot's comment's. He has no life and feel's the need to bash American's every chance he get's. Try bringing something more when you post...your same old bullshit is getting old. Get a life James. (is that why you left the first time? maybe you should crawl back under that rock again. )

I think it's because he has bad teeth. illepall

War is bad no matter the circumstances. It wasnt the pilot's fault, he had the o.k. to fire. Just a bad thing that war bring's sometime's. It wasnt the first case of losing live's to freindly fire, and it wont be the last. I blame GW.

I agree QS, how he can ask for a increase in fund's for the war, but then cut healthcare and education fund's is beyond me. Only 2 more year's of this idiot, then we will have a new one to blame all the world's problem's on.

Typical Sun story, they show things how they like their readers to see them and always they are looking sensation from things that are hardly worth mentioning.

There was lot of things that wen't wrong in that case, quite typical what happened. Pilot can't really see a lot details from his plane (speed, height, cockpit design), so he have to rely information given to him.

It is really lot of people that have injured or died in that operation without enemy fire, they have nice gadgets but they do miss something, maybe team work or common sense, I don't know. I believe it is not the brightest guys that go to army in US anyway, so it makes errors more possible.
War is always a loss, it really does not matter what is reason.

Also what I have understood, Bush is just a muppet, decisions are made elsewhere, sure he is very funny and easy to laugh at, that is purposely so, imo.

That's a sad accident, not 'stupidity of the Americans'.

I think the pilots did nothing wrong as they were told no friendlies on ground. Sure it's easy (and quite certainly horrible for the pilots) in hindsight to think 'why didn't they look closer first before opening fire?' but none of us were there in those cockpits with a mission plan strapped to your thigh and a responsibility to protect ground forces.

American soldiers get killed every day, why there has to be massive headlines if they get killed because of a mistake (friendly fire, copter crash)? The whole war (and every war due to today afaik) is a big mistake.

Quote from JTbo :

Typical Sun story,

I find it quite amusing that The Sun's reputation has reached Finland!

To be honest even our better newspapers are turning into tabloids now. When The Independent went to a tabloid format I thought they just wanted to make it a more convenient shape to read, but no... Since the war in Iraq they haven't been particularly "independent" either.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I find it quite amusing that The Sun's reputation has reached Finland!

I believe that it is not generally known, however I know thing or two about UK, well also few other countries

Such links are allowed, but when I post a vid with a woman where you can see some breasts and and some bush it gets deleted

Anyway, like it has already been said: War, and particulary this war, are pretty senseless and don't lead anywhere.

Quote from frokki :

American soldiers get killed every day, why there has to be massive headlines if they get killed because of a mistake (friendly fire, copter crash)? The whole war (and every war due to today afaik) is a big mistake.

Firstly, they were British Soldiers that the Americans fired on.

It's newsworthy because the inquest into the incident is happening now, and the MOD said that they couldn't get their hands on the cockpit footage to give to the coroner.

My 2p..

The fault lies with US ground control. They should have been aware that there were friendlies in the area.

The US forces have a reputation for shooting anything that moves, just about every blue on blue incident you read about involves the Americans doing the shooting and someone else on the receiving end.

They don't help themselves by coming off as a bunch of trigger happy yokels when interviewed...in fact, most US forces personnel you see on TV remind me of Cletus from The Simpsons.

:iagree:

This is no way an attack on Americans, but I do recall a (funny) quote from a WW2 german soldier.

"When the English sent their bombs, we ducked. When we sent our bombs, the English ducked. When the Americans sent their bombs, everybody ducked."

not everyone in the army is a redneck...at least going into it anyways. but they a good many of them do portray themselves that way while they are there.

and it is sad that friendly fire still occurs as often as it does, with all of the technological advances that have come about over the past 30 or so years.

my dad was in vietnam (drafted, didn't voluntarilly inlist), and was a sergant in the army. one day his squad was out patrolling along a river, which was also being patrolled by the navy. The army new of the navy's presence, but the reverse was not true.

When the navy saw my dad's squad along the river, they opened fire. several men were injured, a few were killed, and my dad lost his right eye.

what's the point of my story? dunno. i kinda forgot were i was going
but i guess the point could be, the most advanced technology is useless if it isn't utilized.

Quote from Bean0 :

The fault lies with US ground control. They should have been aware that there were friendlies in the area.

I agree with that.
The pilots did go through alot of talk to identify them. So you can't call them stupid.

I remember laughing so hard at that quote the first time I saw it, and its still hilarious

The impression among many is that the US Army is trigger happy, but in most of the cases its just pure negligence. If the air traffic controller guy had said 'possible friendlys in the area' those guys wouldn't have fired because they saw the orange markings.

EDIT: Who needs advanced technology when you have orange paint and a set of eyes

Funny that they don't use friend or foe detection, which should be rather easy to implement and hard to fake if done properly.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Who needs advanced technology when you have orange paint and a set of eyes

yeah, because that's not any easy pattern to figure out and mimic.

Quote from JTbo :

Funny that they don't use friend or foe detection, which should be rather easy to implement and hard to fake if done properly.

And fails. In the Falklands war the British navy shot at its own jets a few times. And in Iraq there was the american jet pilot who had to destroy a Patriot battery on the ground that had targeted him, and IIRC another Patriot installation identified an incoming British aircraft as an enemy missile.

The trick is this: If you don't want to die, don't join the armed forces. Quite why anyone would want to wander around Iraq getting shot at for £14K a year is beyond me. Remember kids, getting killed isn't heroic, or glamourous, or honourable. It just makes a big sloppy mess out of a formerly useful life form.