Deliberate shooting down of fellow pilots

[Jon]

This is potentially a nasty subject and i am not looking to cause any offence at all...But it is one of interest and needs to be talked about

Reading Brian Kingcome's book "A Willingness To Die" he does state that during the launch of the film "The Battle of Britain" in 1969 he landed in deep and very hot water when he happened to mention to a journalist an account of a Squadron CO being deliberatley shot down over Europe by his pilots in 1941. The CO was evidently a poor leader and losing many of his men due to bad tactics. I do not know any names as, Mr Kingcome rightly mentions none, or if the CO managed to bale out into captivity

I have a few questions regards this.

1) Do you feel that time has now passed long enough to enable the names of all involved to be released?

2) I have read instances of Soldiers shooting a poor officer when engaged in combat, i am sure this happened a great deal during the thousands of years of warfare we humans have specialised in and i know the US troops in Vietnam even had a name for it "Fraggin" an officer. But did this happen a great deal in the air war on either side?

Again i stress that, having never been shot at in my life, i am making no assumptions nor laying any blame at the men who did and do these things.

Any thoughts.

[mayfair35]

Jon,
I can only speak from my experiences, but I never heard of anyone deliberately shooting down a member of his squadron or group. By accident, yes. P-38s were notorious for shooting at any in-line single engine plane. We had the problem in our P-40s as well as with the P-51s. Aircraft recognition on occasion turned out to be a problem. I sat on the wing of one of our aces when he opened fire on one of our P-51s while a gaggle of Me-109s and our squadron were fighting. If I hadn’t yelled over the radio at him, I think he would have shot the P-51 down.

Our squadron had a particularly inept pilot assigned as our Squadron Commander. Note I did not say fighter pilot but just pilot. The first mission he led resulted in the unnecessary deaths of two of our pilots, and he was very reluctant to fly unless the Operations Officer insisted. Now if ever anyone would have liked to get rid of such a leader, it was us; but, no one would have contemplated trying to “execute” him.

I think you may have misunderstood “Fragging” in Viet Nam. From my experience, it was more likely done by a lower ranking member who felt the officer, often a 2nd Lt, was exposing them to too much danger by following his orders and attacking the enemy. Or perhaps the officer had disciplined one of his soldiers who intended to get “even”. I spent 3 ½ years flying 17 days a month in-country and my impression is that normally fragging was not because the individual was a bad leader but because he was attempting to establish military order among a group of unhappy dissidents. I have been wrong before, but that is the way I read it.

Art Fiedler

[Jon]

Thanks Art,

Its a tricky subject but one that is definatley covered in the book mentioned. In a way i am glad of the lack of responses as it perhaps shows that, as you state did not happen. I suppose shooting down a member of your squadron was a potentially very visible act to be seen by everyone.
Thanks for your response, unlike me you obviously talk from experience.

Kind Regards

Jon Eeles

[Brian]

Hi Jon

Some years ago, when interviewing a former Hurricane pilot for one of my books, he told me that his then CO was one of those that fitted the inefficient profile (incidentally, I also later interviewed the man in question, but of course did not mention the incident or his lack of popularity!).

On one occasion, during a strafing mission, the CO flew in front of his No.2's aircraft, thus providing a tempting target and opportunity - but he managed to cease firing just in time, although sorely tempted. So the thoughts were there!!

It was alleged that a famous ace was deliberately shot down during 'mock' combat by another at the gunnery school both were attending. He survived. The aggressor was lost in action a few months later. This, and many other hundreds of friendly fire incidents will be covered in my forthcoming book 'Blue on Blue in WWII; Aerial Friendly Fire Incidents'


Cheers
Brian

[Franek Grabowski]

Well, I would not call such incident a friendly fire, as they were definetelly unfriendly. I am awared of two commanders treated by their subordinates to be shot down, but one of them was downed by Germans and another stopped flying. There was some immediate joy involved.
I was also told of a certain army commander (name known to me) who was found dead on a battlefield with a shot from the back. A man who was telling me about that, who knew the killed man, noted that what a man [bastard] he must have been if he had not noticed that he is so much hated. A similar story is mentioned by Alastair Maclean in his HMS Ulysses.
Such incidents definetelly happenned, but I would guess pre-war officers or NCOs with a strict and dumb disciplinary approach and no real combat experience were involved. I do not think anybody would kill his commander because of his bad commanding, he must have had been a real pain in the a**e.
Concerning the Kingcome's incident, as far as I know it involved a Winco and occurred with a Canadian Squadron. At least that is what has been told by certain Dilip Sarkar and what was consistent with other data appearing here and there, among others during Piece of Cake controversy.

[Graham Boak]

Are we being mealy-mouthed here, or are we discussing an incident other than the Bader/Cassons one? As I understand it, claims have been made that Cassons shot down Bader, though the evidence presented failed to completely convince me, and there seemed to be no need to include any element of intention.

Given the RAF's black humour, comments about any senior commander's loss being deliberate could well have been common, without necessarily having been true. Bader was something of a controversial figure: perhaps in his casse the story was just that much more believeable!