I’ve been thinking a bit about how soldiers avoid killing eachothers in war. Usually both sides dress up in their own kind of uniform, so they are easy to tell from eachother.
Has it ever happened that they for some reason had the same uniforms. Wouldn’t that make things really difficult? I suppose sometimes people have tried to sneak into the other side using their uniform, but that kind of thing is never shown in movies.
During the Battle of the Bulge German soldiers did in fact infiltrate the American lines while wearing American uniforms, and I’m sure it was mentioned in the movie. Other than that, friendly fire kills quite a few even when armies wear different uniforms.
Interestingly, there was a lot confusion with uniforms in the US Civil War. Especially near the beginning of the war, many units wore the uniforms of their own state militias. Therefore, there were quite a few soldiers from Northern states in various shades of grey, and some soldiers from the South wore blue.
For example, some say that an important factor at 1st Bull Run was an advance by a Southern unit who all were wearing blue uniforms, and therefore were not fired upon as quickly as possible by McDowell’s forces, especially by artillery.
The Brandenbergers, German commandos during WWII, were trained to camoflage themselves as enemy soldiers, as well as peasants or whatever was needed for the mission.
I recall reading about a war/minor skirmish between 2 neighboring Central American countries, who both had supplied their army using surplus US military uniforms. So they were basically wearing the same uniforms.
As I recall, the battle took place over a bridge or border crossing, so it was pretty much ‘shoot at the guys on the other side’, and the matching uniforms didn’t matter much. If the armies eventually they advanced into each other, and the neat battle lines broke down into skirmishing groups of soldiers, all wearing the same uniforms, it might have mattered. I don’t remember enough about this to know if that happened.
P.S. I do remember that this battle started over a soccer match between teams from the 2 countries!
The Soccer War was fought in 1969 between El Salvador & Honduras. And I bet you thought British hooligans were bad.
Lambchops, the confusion during the First Manassas (Bull Run) was due not only to the blue uniforms worn by the approaching reinforcements, but also to the fact that the Confederates carried the “Stars and Bars” flag (not the more familiar Confederate battle flag), which was easily confused at a distance with the flag of the Union.
The soccer match only stoked deep, pre-existing tensions between the two nations–it wasn’t the cause of the war, even though the violence surrounding the match pushed things past the boiling point.
I don’t know much about identifying enemy individuals. However, I do know that enemy aircraft are identified by silhouette and behavior and not by insiginias or markings such as color.
Enemy and friendly aircraft are also identified by transponder signal - known as an IFF (“Identify Friend or Foe”) system. During the recent Iraq war an RAF Tornado fighter’s IFF system malfunctioned and it was shot down by an American Patriot missile system, killing the crew. If I recall, a week or so later a US Navy F/A-18 Hornet either suffered the same fate or came close - anyone with more time on their hands (I’m at work) able to find concrete info?
Yeah, I was speaking of past methods. It used to be that a missile wasn’t fired at a target in air-to-air cases without a visual ID. It would appear that it has been decided somewhere up in the stratospheric levels of command that an occasional shoot-down of frendlies by ground based air defense units, because of various equipment failures, is acceptable.
From what I’ve heard/read, an IFF malfunction is all it takes for a friendly plane to be identified as an enemy missle. Here’s a couple links:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030329-patriot01.htm
The linked articles also mention how the US government blatently lied about the efficacy of the Patriot during the first Gulf War. I remember a Bush I speech where he claimed 40-odd missles destroyed by Patriots, but in reality it’s doubtful if any were destroyed.
