F-18F Super Hornet shot down by "friendly" fire

Hmmmmm.... Sounds like a conspiracy...

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It is very sad to hear of friendly fire incidents. I do know they were very common in WW2, particularly as the ground guys shot at anything in the air.

American fighters arriving at Pearl Harbor, the night of the Pearl Harbor raid were shot to hell by the anti aircraft gunners.

One I only learned of within the last ten years was the downing by friendly fire of the RAF hero Guy Gibson. Guy Gibson was the leader of the Dam Busters. A tail gunner in the RAF confessed on his death bed he was the man who shot down Guy Gibson. Guy Gibson had flown a Mosquito bomber, a very fast bomber, and Guy Gibson was the lead plane which dropped the bombs and flares to mark the target that night. The tail gunner was on his way home when what appeared to be an Me 410 appeared on his tail. The tail gunner emptied his machine gun, and claimed a victory in the after flight paperwork. In the morning he was interviewed by an intelligence officer who more or less said "ah ****!" and provided enough information that to indicate the tail gunner brought down Guy Gibson. At night, a Mosquito bomber would look a lot like a number of German night fighters, and the Mosquito must have had radio problems.

These things happen and are always unfortunate.
 
I think I might have read somewhere they were on their way back from a sortie, but the important thing is they are both alive. Prayers for the crew of the USS Gettysburg. They don't have time to make a lot of decisions during war. Thanks for your service in a war zone.
 
Hahahahahahaaaaa!!! Riiiiiiiight! ;)


Let me ask a question - how do you know that what the .gov and and the mockingbird media said happened, happened the way they said it happened? How do you know?

I'm like you, I believe what I'm told to believe by the same people and entities that regularly lie to me.

Maybe it did, I mean, the US Navy has an active-duty sailor Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelly, whose alter-ego is drag queen, Harpy Daniels, was named the Navy's first digital ambassador. Maybe it was someone recruited under that program that made the booboo. :rolleyes:
 
Thank God the crew members survived.

We can buy more F-18's...
They only cost taxpayers between $50,000,000 and $120,000,000 each.

These brave young men are priceless. :cool:

... and brave young women. We lost two female Naval Aviators near Mt. Rainier, WA on October 15th. R.I.P., Shield Maidens...
 
They had friendly fire problems in the invasion of Sicily. LTG Leslie J. McNair was killed in Normandy by a too short bombing run. Some think Glen Miller's plane was hit by bombs being dumped from a called off mission. There is a photo of a B-17 receiving a fatal blow from bombs dropped by a plane above it.
Naturally we will wait for "the investigation", see if they try to scapegoat a low ranking EM like they did in the Bonhomme Richard affair, find a sailor who's bitter over pulling another tour of sea duty thanks to a non-deployable female. .
The courts-martial in the USS Fitzgerald case were halted, a lot of uncomplimentary information came out about poor leadership, poor training, crew members not getting along....
 
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I would not be too quick to put any blame on the lady CNO. She has a 40 year service record and has held numerous high level Navy positions and it is highly unlikely she had anything directly or indirectly to do with the friendly fire incident. But all bets are off if a scapegoat is needed.
 
It is very sad to hear of friendly fire incidents. I do know they were very common in WW2, particularly as the ground guys shot at anything in the air.

American fighters arriving at Pearl Harbor, the night of the Pearl Harbor raid were shot to hell by the anti aircraft gunners.

One I only learned of within the last ten years was the downing by friendly fire of the RAF hero Guy Gibson. Guy Gibson was the leader of the Dam Busters. A tail gunner in the RAF confessed on his death bed he was the man who shot down Guy Gibson. Guy Gibson had flown a Mosquito bomber, a very fast bomber, and Guy Gibson was the lead plane which dropped the bombs and flares to mark the target that night. The tail gunner was on his way home when what appeared to be an Me 410 appeared on his tail. The tail gunner emptied his machine gun, and claimed a victory in the after flight paperwork. In the morning he was interviewed by an intelligence officer who more or less said "ah ****!" and provided enough information that to indicate the tail gunner brought down Guy Gibson. At night, a Mosquito bomber would look a lot like a number of German night fighters, and the Mosquito must have had radio problems.

These things happen and are always unfortunate.

Yes, thank God the F-18 crew lived to tell their story.

Just a comment about the Mosquito, My father's older brother, Edward Harney, flew them out of N. Africa. They were night fighters, painted all black. They are fairly large compared to the fighters of the day. The one on display at the Air Force Museum at WPAFB was dedicated by Uncle Eddie. He once said that the most fun he had during the war was after the strike he would follow the RR tracks South looking for supply/troop trains to strafe on the way back to Africa.
 
Didn't we recently have someone stand on a stage and tell us that we had no men in harm's way? Seems like someone forgot to tell all those who are too busy dealing with Houthi missiles everyday.

My understanding is that this incident happened in the fog of war as a result of a barrage of attacks.
 
More from the former F-14 aviator and a former LSO. They're getting info from both official and back channels. The discussion is a quite long and full of details on how flight ops work during this kind of situation.

Key takeaways:
-There had been Huthi drone attacks on the CAG earlier that night.

-The Hornet (Ripper 1) was shot down while on final approach to the Truman.

-Gettysburg fired 2 x SM2 missiles. The first destroyed Ripper 1, the 2nd went after Ripper 2 (the Hornet behind Ripper 1 in the landing pattern) but missed by ~100 ft and exploded in the water below Ripper 2.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoYOsX2GpX4&pp=ygUMd2FyZCBjYXJyb2xs[/ame]
 
That Aegis combat system has overloaded and confused its operators before. The cruiser Vincennes nailed an Iranian airliner in the climb going to Mecca killing all on board. Operator swore blind he saw an aircraft in the descent, but all other data showed otherwise.
 
If you take the time to watch that whole video (1 hour+) You can start to understand just how busy those operations are. Two things, among others stand out to me, the preemptive eject of Ripper 1 (they got out before the missile struck) and the guidance for the second missile being "cut" before any more damage could occur. If those two things had not happened things would have turned out much worse.
 

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