Originally Posted by
gums
Salute!
Thnx ORAC, Lonewolf, et al for recognizing the fog of war RE: the short round that struck a school. Sadly, sierra happens, and we can only try to find out why and then do our best to prevents it from happening again.
The ROE and the extràordinary efforts by the planners and actual delivery folks on one side to minimize collateral casualties and damage in this conflict is beyond pale. Yet sierra happens, and there is no reason to disregard actaing upon poor intell or even intentional "poor" intell by nefarious parties. Happened to me a few dozen klicks nw of Plieku in 1968 when my wingie and I dropped on a small ville supposedly harboring an enemy big guy. Turned out it was a political enemy of the provence chief! Talk about feeling low! It is the second worst thing to find out other than you snuffed a bunch of your friends.
Despite the unnerving accuracy of the stuff nowadays that I would love to have had back then and on my second chapter, things have not evolved to achieve what most of the innocent critics think is possible.
Gums reminds all who have not experienced the opportunity to mistakenly drop a short round. Maybe Mogs can comment from his adventure in the 80's.
out,
Luckily we only had one “drop-short” incident in ‘82. A wayward 4.5” shell from one of our war-canoes landed in the outskirts of Stanley and killed 3 local residents. Both ship and spotter were mortified. I did spend a few days believing that I had splashed a helo carrying one of our shot-down pilots though. Not a good feeling. Luckily, the SF spotted him being loaded into a Herc bound for Argentina and let me know.
Another Islander was injured when a pair of GR3s bombed his grass strip to deny its use by Pucaras. He said that if only we had asked, he would have ploughed it up for us!
Mog