I saw a description of a battle in Afghanistan. The special forces and the Afghan friendlies were trying to take a fortress from the Taliban during the initial invasion. The US forces had a gizmo that would use GPS and an indicated direction and distance to pass a target to air force bombers. They were in the process of calling in an air strike when the batteries died. They swapped batteries and called in the strike, and the bombs dropped right on them. Apparently when you swap batteries or restart the device, the indicated target returns to the device’s current location. (Try to spot the design flaw in that concept).
It’s a thing that happens sometimes. I remember reading of a similar incident in Vietnam, but can’t find it at the moment. It is a practiced-for thing to drop rounds right on the wire, potentially fragging the outer line of defenders, if a position is in danger of being overrun.
Anecdote: My pa was a Green Beret radioman in Vietnam, one time his team was in a firefight with a vastly superior enemy force and he called for arty. A guy replied with a callsign he didn’t recognize, Dad gave the guy his coordinates and the enemy’s, &c. Guy said “Confirm danger close.” (i.e., “you’re a lil’ bit in the blast radius, are you sure you want to risk us hitting you?”) Dad ofc said “yes” without stopping to think.
Once the rounds were in the air, he realized he was well outside danger close for any Army/USMC artillery shell. He gave the order for his guys to become one with the ground anyway.
And then the world exploded.
Turns out he hadn’t been talking to a USMC firebase with 155mm howitzers. It was USS New Jersey’s 16" guns.
I’ve heard stories like that before about the Jersey, not that I’m casting any aspersions on your father. I remember one story when I was there about her dropping a round on top of a sniper position. I believe the accepted notion is that a shell from a battleship can pretty much flatten a grid square, so being anywhere in the vicinity would likely be lethal.
There was a “Broken Arrow” call made at the Battle of Ia Drang very early in the war (this was the subject of the book and movie “We Were Soldiers Once”). This meant that all available aircraft should come to the defense of the Americans who were under extremely heavy attack. Napalm dropped on the perimeter line killed and wounded a number of American soldiers.
The Australians called fire on themselves during the Battle of Long Tan, but the guy coordinating the fires wouldn’t do it. He brought it in really close, but not actually on the position.
Outside of Hollywood, that isn’t what final protective fire actually is. FPFs are not deliberately placed on top of defensive positions or right on the wire of defended positions. FM 101-5-1 defines final protective fire as:
There’s a bit out there, his name was Alexander Prokhorenko. This articlelooks into the story in a bit more detail. I don’t know anything about the credibility of Public Radio International but the attached radio interview doesn’t seem pro-Russian at all.
I haven’t looked this up, but I remember that very early in the first gulf war, some US soldiers were in a Saudi town on the border that was attacked by Iragi troops. As I remember it, they called in artillery fire on their own position. They were in buildings so that helped their decision a bit.
You’re thinking of the Battle of Al-Khafji; 2 USMC observation teams remained in the city when it was occupied by the Iraqis. They attempted to direct artillery fire from their positions in the city, not on their positions; the Iraqis apparently were never aware they were there. Their presence in the city turned out to be more a liability than an asset in the end, from The Battle of al-Khafji (pdf)
Audie Murphy did it in front of witnesses during the action for which he won the Medal of Honor. His book To Hell and back is much better than the movie.
This guy’s Master’s thesis at the NPS, citing Trainor’s, “The General’s War,” claimed the Marines called down danger close arty on the streets adjacent to the buildings they were hiding out in, to frighten off the Iraqis that were in the process of occupying the lower floors of the buildings the Marines were holed up in.
Not quite what I think the OP was asking for, but pretty close. I too vaguely remember reading about some incidents during the Vietnam War too, where U.S. forces ordered their own positions to be fired upon. When I find the specific incident, I’ll point it out.