incidents so friendly fire have a perverse relationship with friendly fire paratrooper an eighty second airborne division was a victim of friendly fire in operation urgent fury in grenada and so for years this was ninety three i had a perverse sense of curiosity how could sometimes some of the best trained best equipped people in the world sometimes fall short of the mark in his book friendly fire dr snoeck investigates an encounter in a no fly zone in which two u.s. f. fifteen fighters shot down to u.s. army black hawk helicopters instantly killing twenty six u.n. peacekeepers this happened in one thousand nine hundred four full three years after the end of the first gulf war it was a high shooting war going around there's not a lot of bad guys running around on the ground there aren't a lot of enemy planes flying around near broad daylight unlimited visibility relatively benign conditions it's on camp lane this one in the fog of war on the call sheet that morning the two f. fifteen pilots were briefed that they would be the first aircraft to enter the no

fly zone by regulation no helicopters were allowed to fly into the zone without fighter coverage. unbeknown to the f. fifteen pilots a last minute early morning trip was scheduled to get peacekeepers to or below the town deep in northern iraq when the pilots entered the no fly zone that morning they were alarmed to see two helicopters appear on their radar nobody's supposed to be in front of them that day so you're already your expectations these are probably enemy helicopters that speeded that out too that this sense of all you're trying to figure out is a hip isn't something which soviet as a nation have come through. the army's rules of engagement the f. fifteen approached the blackhawks to visually confirm that they were enemy aircraft before firing they were trained on this they take a lot of pride in this but of course a black hawk u.s. army black hawk. was configured these two black hawks were configured slightly different that normally a black hawk they have little wings. that's on the side and sponsons and on this

particular day the blackhawks are going about one hundred miles to the town of erbil inside deep inside northern iraq and so they attached extra fuel tanks to the blackhawks and these little wings in that change the shape what shapes what we see every day it's largely shaped by our expectations. by what we want to see what we expect to see and also then the ultimate you know sort of the physical stimulus that actually enters or i so it was a very ambiguous stimulus speech. in a very strong set of expectations the visual identification has happened the intersection of a strong set of expectations possibly a little desire to maybe see an enemy aircraft. and a very ambiguous stimulus that actually came in the eyes of what we do as humans we fill in the blanks. and then finally both shooter and target aircraft were quips

with. a specially designed electronic equipment something we call. identify friend or foe and this is equipment designed specifically to prevent this type of accident remember so how in the world could this happen. the helicopters were inside the no fly zone and squawking a code that coalition aircraft when they're in turkey they don't realize that three years before the air force had changed to two different codes they only get one code they were squawking the code they always squad fifteen's or checking for that correct code and of course it's coming back sour because the f. fifteen because helicopters are critical for turkey in the f. fifteen zero for the code in the no fly zone because they're. what keeps me awake at night is in complex organizations like this good people highly trained highly equipped doing what they do every day normal behavior normal organizations. can

actually result in terrible tragedy i would not want to subscribe to the proposition therefore that every episode of friendly fire can simply sort of be. dismissed it as an unfortunate reflection of the fog and friction of war there would be some episodes i imagine where one might say in this case the friendly fire episode was preventable. and therefore the people who failed to prevent it the people who perpetrated it ought to be held responsible ready reading. we're doing a lot of stupid over here pop never forget those words. he said we're going on a mission for a couple of days after that. but he said we're doing a lot of stupid. and i didn't know what that meant because i had no idea what they

were doing and when you look at what happened and how it happened it was stupid the army creed has x. amount of lies lost in the last three or four lines one of them is i will never leave a fallen soldier or fallen comrade essentially i will never leave a man behind and what happened here what happened that day if on the battlefield was he got left behind not by another one of his peers but by his superior by the commanding officer on the battlefield he got left behind. around four am on january sixteenth two thousand eight. hundred harvest six individuals were spotted fleeing across an open field in an attempt to evade u.s. forces. are on right now. private first class dave sherrod and seven members of the aerial reaction force landed nearby to intercept the six individuals believed to be on are

members of al qaeda. departing the apache the aerial reaction force advanced towards a large they can also refer to as a burn where the six suspected insurgents had taken cover.

when dave was a little kid he wanted to be exactly like his stand. and his dad was a football player macho and dave was not a macho kid but he wanted to be like is stad and so i think he he almost forced his own personality to be more like dad which was tough and so on the exterior at times he was very top but inside he just had a really sweet heart we just had this bond that was it was father and son but it was something way beyond father and son. and i was so heavily invested in making sure that he grew up knowing he was loved beyond knowing he was loved knowing that he was just important that and. secure safe. they were so close that the points that made me jealous is as

a son because i felt like i was almost living in the shadow sometimes it was like there could be he was just a guy that dead once you knew you wanted to be on his side you wanted him to to like you because. he was still great guy. i feel. the aerial reaction force surrounded the demanding that the insurgents surrender instead the insurgents opened fire in the chaos private first class danny kimmie was killed moments later specialist john sixty was killed.

in the midst of exploding grenades and machine gun fire specialist rafael collins private first class brandon clan staff sergeant christopher mcgraw and private first class sharon tried to maintain their positions. collins in quinn later received silver stars for their heroic actions. for thirty minutes the enemy engaged the soldiers any member of his blackhawks above attempted to provide cover. or to really. get a good. reinforcements finally arrived from second platoon charlie company. they quickly destroyed the

last of the insurgents and moved to secure the area and locate the wounded unable to determine how many soldiers were still on the ground officers called for help from the pilots above. good. all of the wounded were located except private first class share it over the radio second platoon notified air cover early not able to look at what. sixty six minutes after the fighting began share a badly wanted was located with a faint pulse he died on the helicopter headed for the combat support hospital within a few days of private first class share its death the family began receiving information

about the circumstances surrounding his death well yeah i believe they told us that it was a it was a the fight and he was killed by a grenade fire it just seems like that's what the casualty officer told us because that's what was in the paper the casually officer came to the house and said well we think it may have been friendly fire and that was like whoa. and then i asked i said well would you have whoever is in charge over there in iraq call me up and tell me what's going on and he said i will and we got a phone call from his lieutenant colonel the next day who vehemently denied to me that it was friendly fire then i said to him would you please. tell me what happened and he told me what happened then i said would you please send me an e-mail recounting exactly what you just told me which he did which i have. in the

e-mail the lieutenant colonel wrote as dave's elements surrounded the position the enemy opened fire at very close range touching off a fierce grenade and small arms fire that resulted in the deaths of dave corporal john sigsbee and private first class danny kemi in the next week dave was laid to rest at arlington national cemetery. think you need to review economic ups and downs in the final months thanks to the old sang i and the rest because i meet a single day every week on. my

plate as street cleaner zoom in love with a waitress i go on stage managing that there's an audience i used to take drugs and drink like a fish. the middle east told me about the circus but i was such a punk i was like what circus. circus and clearly it's gonna. break down stereotypes about kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. dramas they're trying to be ignored. stories others refuse to notice. food since changing the world lights and.

so picture of today's you know. from around the globe. brooklyn. the army did it right at our only. four months after the incident dave and vicki received the final incident report in direct contradiction to the lieutenant colonels initial e-mail the report stated that his son had been killed by friendly fire when his commanding officer lieutenant hanson shot him believing that he was the enemy. confused by the conflicting accounts of his son's death dave reached out to private first class committee's father dog a police officer in illinois doug became somebody who i spent literally hours on the telephone with. and i shared this e-mail with him that had been sent to me being a cop he looked at this and instantly instantly had heartburn with and had serious

issues with it after months of asking for additional information about the conflicting reports of their sons' deaths and getting no answers from the army dave met with doug to me in person for the first time at a ceremony at fort campbell when we were at fort campbell and we were visiting for this memorial service we had kind of gotten to a point where we both felt like we could release it and let it go after the ceremony the two fathers were talking in one of their rooms when there was a knock at the door to him list of men who had vital information about the night that their boys were killed and of them video of the incident they did that because they were sick and tired of the way that fort campbell had treated this that their superior officer treated this and they said there was a cover up going on. i was furious i was absolutely furious here is you know here's this organization that's supposed to protect me my son gave his life to.