Friendly fire WWII

[sveahk]

Hello,
Just finished Rick Atkinson’s „An Army at Dawn”, the war in North Africa, 1942-1943, where there are a few references to “friendly fire” from that time and area. I thought this one quite interesting:
“On the rare occasions when Allied planes dominated the skies, fratricide added to the ground troops’ torment. Word soon spread of an incident near Medjez-el-Bab, where a company of American tank destroyers was helping secure the town on thanksgiving morning (Thursday, November 26, 1942) when eleven U.S. P.38 Lightnings flew over. Jubilant at the unexpected help from friendly fighters, the tank destroyer crews raced across the open terrain, waving and smiling. Built with distinctive twin fuselages, the P.38s languidly circled until the sun was behind them, then dropped to fifty feet and executed five textbook strafing runs in three minutes.
The attack all but destroyed the shocked company, which fired not a single retaliatory shot. Five men were killed – including the unit’s only World War I veteran – and sixteen wounded; nearly every vehicle and antitank weapon was destroyed or damaged. One outraged company commander in the 1st Armored Division ordered his men to shoot any airborne object larger than a goose. And another bromide circulated among American soldiers: “if it flies, it dies”. Allied pilots grew so accustomed to being fired upon by their own troops that the formula for recognizing enemy aircraft from the ground, “WEFT” - check the Wings, Engines, Fuselage, Tails – was said to mean “Wrong every fucking time.”

Friendly greetings
Hans Krensler