I think Oliver Stone’s “Platoon”–and possibly “Apocalypse Now”–depicted a scene in which NVA troops completely overrun a Marine stronghold. As the defensive positions collapse, a desperate US commander picks up the radio and calls in a napalm strike right on their own position. The logic being: “If we’re going to die, let take these SOB’s with us.”
Is there much historic precendent of calling in a bombardment directly of one’s own position?
Great cite.
The quote in the Audie Murphy movie is supposedly accurate. During the action for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor he was asked by the artillery controller on the other end of the radio,“How close is the enemy?” LT Murphy said, “Hold on a second and you can ask them yourself.” If this was actually said no one will probably ever know but he did call in artillery on his own location while he was firing on the advancing enemy from a burning tank destroyer.
Yes there is, but not often. There is a line in the vicinity of forward positions and it is unsafe to target anything short of that line. I believe that artillery units are reluctant to accede to a request to fire inside the safe line for artillery and might even be justified in demanding a written order to do so.
However, historian John Toland in his book detailing the WWII Battle of the Bulge wrote of a couple of incidents in which requests to fire inside the line were complied with. In both cases units were being attacked by German tanks and they requested fire on or near their location. Their rationale was that they were in holes and the tanks were exposed and in order to keep from being completely swamped they had to risk the danger from friendly fire.
On the History Channel a few months back, they had several service men talking about their experiences in Afghanistan. They were trapped on a mountain and were pinned down by Taliban fighters, and they called down an airstrike on their own position because that was the only way they had any hope of surviving. The pilots who were in communication with the ground forces were reluctant to do it, but they did do it, and at least some of the guys on the ground survived.
I think it’s not common, but not unheard of in desperate situations. Artillerly doesn’t usually kill you by landing directly on your head; it kills you by blowing up somewhere in a 20 yard radius and spraying jagged metal at you. If you’re in a nice hole with your head down, that metal won’t reach you.
So if your unit is in prepared foxholes or a basement, then calling artillery down on yourself is risky, but not a death sentence. And of course, it’s a lot worse for the bad guys above ground (especially as if they’re attacking, they’re probably standing up and trying to move).
It happened in Forest Gump, didnit?
If you’re huddling in a hole and the equivalent of a 155 mm shell lands within 20 yards of you–perhaps more–that shell will pulverize you, no matter what. The craters those shells create are not to be believed. Somebody may provide a cite, if we’re lucky.
This talks about blast radius, but obviously doesn’t factor in the soldier hiding in a fox hole. I may be wrong re: dug in troops.
“Typical kill radius was 30 meters for a 105mm or 4.2inch round, 50 meters for a 155mm and 80 meters for an 8inch round.”
http://www.vietvet.org/arty.htm