1994 Black Hawk Friendly Fire Shootdown Incident | DCS WORLD Reenactment
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In Iran Iraq war a Phoenix killed 3 migs at once. See if that's possible
th-cam.com/video/ZHSjKZ42ZoQ/w-d-xo.html here you have.
Already done... Search GR video archive
Thanks
They found remains of only one iirc. Iraq data showed 2 lost on that day.
RIP my Brothers and Sisters. The F-15 visual I.D. was their last hope. Unfortunately, I believe the pilots brains had already told their eyes what they were going to see...an Iraqi Hind. Mistakes by both sides and finger pointing has never changed the fact that so many peoples (families/friends/coworkers) lives were demolished. Never Forgotten. Eagle Flight!
I feel for all of them.
How can you continue a mission after a friendly fire incident?
The transcripts makes it out that the pilots were too eager to engage anything that moved.
Another pass over could have made out the Black Hawks.
There was no rush. They weren't going to get away.
You can't just stop and point at the pilots, you can see a LOOOONG chain where the holes in the swiss cheese lined up to cause this incident.
There is never just one factor that causes this, it all starts with a chain of events and if one of them had been changed or broken, the incident could never happen.
There was a big chain of errors, but the air force pilots where despered to kill something, even if it was friendly
Imagine being a pilot that wants to become an ace, but its only war its a lame easy war against a country whit no air force, the lust for blood must be huge
@@StoneCoolds Thats kinda a big issue if your pilots are thinking like that. Means they will rush into action without thinking something though ect. Honestly its a failure in terms of training and selection in my mind. :(
My hope is that these Eagle pilots careers were ended and they spent years flying cargo planes fun of rubber dog toys out of Hong Kong.
This game fits perfectly for doing this military reenactments.
Major Harry Shapland Irish Guards was onboard one of those aircraft. RIP my good friend!
This is why the 53rd NATO Tigers squadron patch shows a hole in his foot.
Cap, thanks for taking the time to make a video I requested! Cheers my boy!
thx for the request
I remember being on duty at Camp Lejeune when it happened.
Only AF Captain Jim Wang faced court martial and was acquitted and a few others got reprimand.
For an officer, reprimand killed their careers.
For Jim Wang, he took it personally as a victim and he felt that it was because he was Asian.
He forgot about UCMJ Article 134 (catch all)
He had the opportunity to do something and didn't.
He couldn't say "it wasn't my job" when it's happening on his scope.
You can be acquitted but to the military you're "toxic."
No command will take Wang after that.
Entire AWAC crew member on scopes could have been more proactive to insure those choppers had a safe corridor.
If they didn't know their jobs then they shouldn't have been trusted with such a critical mission.
Thing with these kinds situations, is 9999/10,000 it goes just fine. The one time it don't, everyone with elements of a one sided story has an opinion.
Ok dude, you are taking something very complicated and making it overly simple. I ended up as an AWACS Weapons Director directly as a result of this incident. So you are saying that this only fell on the AWACS crew? Not General Pilkington who approved the Blackhawks to be added to the schedule after the ATO and FRAG were done and never notified anyone? Maybe the ACE onboard AWACS that was a Command Element and didn't speak up when he had a direct comm channel to General Pilkington? Or maybe the F-15 crews (I ended up flying in F-15 units for 4 years before I left the AF) that ran a bad VID? The F-15 unit intel shop had been pencil whipping VID training for an extended period of time and this was also causal. This video touches on a huge complicated issue and you're bound and determined to hang the AWACS crew out to dry. Were they causal? Absolutely. I don't know your experience as far as Command and Control or Combat Ops. But at no point were the Eagles cleared to kill anything and the CJCS standing ROE would not have allowed them to have fired even if they were hinds unless the hinds were threatening US or Coalition forces. The OPC rules were different and that brings up another point. The Blackhawks were not on the correct Mode 4. I spoke directly to the unit commander of the helicopter unit in 1996 when I was working with their unit in NY during Global Yankee 96. We discussed at length that breakdown of C2 and aircrews. Were the AWACS Weapons team negligent? I say Wang and Tracey were. I say the 2 brand new WDs getting no help were not. I will say that crew compositions were completely different in the years that followed. Primarily due to lessons learned from this incident. Randy May had been involved in an incident in Desert Storm where he claimed a helicopter kill but no wreckage was ever found though a vehicle, a mercedes, was destroyed in the location he claimed the kill. This led to him being ridiculed in the fighter community for killing a mercedes. This isn't mentioned here but it was mentioned in the proceedings as a contributing factor to the aggressive mindset and fangs out mentality. As an AWACS WD leaving Afghanistan in 2002 I told my replacement " Be careful with guys going Fangs out and growing one eyebrow when things heat up. Nothing in the air is a threat to us or the fighters here and certainly nothing on the ground is a threat to the fighters. So be the voice of reason and SLOW things down when things start to get sketchy" He was on a jet in 2002 when the F-16s bombed the Canadians at a training range and AWACS was trying to get the Vipers to climb and wait to see if we could get confirmation that there were no friendlies in the area. AWACS was talking to the ground units to verify positions when the F-16 lead called defensive and dropped without an AWACS or higher HQ approval. This killed and injured several Canadians. The inherent right to self defence is never denied so the F-16 lead hung his career on being right and wasn't so we ended up with a bittersweet as a result. It's really easy to second guess crews in combat at room temperature and one G but understand that all the ROE stuff you know now came as a direct result of incidents like these so your judgement comes with the benefit of hindsight and lessons learned due to these incidents. I'd be happy to talk, within limits, more about this incident. One thing this showed the world was that the trained number of crews in AWACS was 23, not 42 as congress had been told. Crew experience levels were low as there had been a big exodus of experience after Desert Storm. I actually knew Laurie Piper that was killed on one of the Blackhawks. I knew General Pilkington. I met the intel officer at Bitburg that was in the Eagle unit and acknowledged shortcomings in the training process due to deployment timelines. And I know where Wickson ended up after this was all said and done. He was in a tough spot too. Brand new flight lead and has a VERY experienced dash 2 helping him down a path of misperceptions. Ok I'm off my soapbox. My point is combat is a very dynamic environment and it's really rare for one person to have the big picture accurately. It's really hard to be the one to say "wait a minute , maybe we should throttle back a second and sanity check this before we smash a button and have a pointy thing come off the jet and turn the wrong people into hair, teeth, and eyeballs in the improper alignment" We have to have controlled aggression and that can be a very hard line to walk, cheers.
@@CHECK6-963 pilots wanted blood and they where gonna got it, friendly or not, i mean, it was an easy war with barely any enemy targets, those pilots must been despered to kill something ez to brag about, even if it was a Mercedes
Add that to all the chain of mistakes happening before they even went down for VID
@@KARO69GRP Probably the same "reasoning" that lead to US aircraft attacking a number of British APC's ect in the 1st gulf..... Can't quite remember but I think the pilots even got let off for the most part.
@@KARO69GRP C models don't carry bombs
I like the documentary-esque feel of the video. Seems like an episode of Air Crash Investigation or Seconds From Disaster, for instance.
I worked quite a bit with 159 aviation at Ft Campbell in the late 90's, great aviators and air crews, very sad story.
The pilots were dishonest and the AWACS recording magically disappeared.
You know what the f15 pilot reminds me of, both before and after the kill... That leaked footage that got Manning put away: The gunship is over Iraq waiting for permission to shoot some unarmed civies and they're heard on radio chatter, like a junkie craving to get his fix "come on! Let me at them! I'm ready to shoot! Come on!"
A true psychopaths dream job is to be able to kill and maim with complete impunity.
Similar with the A-10 driver that killed Matty Hull. He wanted action so badly that he didn't leave room for reasonable caution. There are a LOT of A-10 friendly-fire incidents.
Well, I guess it's an effect of the training soldiers / pilots receive. For years they are conditioned to fight the enemy and kill them.
The bigger the gun you get, the more empowered you feel and the more destruction you can bring.
War is Hell.
@@MistedMind If thats the state your pilots are in after training then there has been a very very major failure somehere.
@@maghost_rider5698 I don't disagree.
Good reenactment, remember the fallen.
This was an excellent replay of events on that fateful day. Thank you for putting it together. I was talking about this incident last week with some veteran friends and just thought to see if anyone had put something like this together. I was deployed with the squadron at the time and in the thick of everything happening. This really details the operational aspect of the incident. There are so many things that went wrong, but honestly, it was the attitude of the pilots (the entire squadron, not just these two), that led to this incident. Visual recognition training was conducted daily in the intel briefing, and all vis-recce training was tested and recorded.
My Lt's fiancé was on one of those helos. She was part of the squadron. So he and I watched her killed by one of my Lt's closest friends as we were reviewing the tapes, trying to figure out what happened to Eagle Flight. Thanks again for a great video.
Ik this video was posted a year ago but I’m just now seeing it. I was an AWACS aircrew member for about 7 years I was an Air Surveillance Technician and also a Communications Systems Operator. This happened way before my time however I will say that this incident is briefed to EVERY class that graduates any Crew Position school at Tinker AFB (Home of the E-3 AWACS). It was such a tragedy of complacency and failure to actual visually ID an aircraft. This incident is why the E-3 and it’s crew members train so much and a lot of TTPs have come out to prevent this from happening in the future.
Cap, would be really helpful to lower the in game sound to hear your commentary better
Yup, got this one a bit wrong :(
fine like it is.
@@grimreapers no, don't.
It's good as it is.
Lieutenant Laurie Piper was among those killed in that incident.
I had the honor of knowing her, talking with her many times at Incirlik AB, Turkey.
I left in February 1994, and that happened not long after.
Her mom wrote a book about the military cover up attempt.
RIP Lt. Piper
It was an honor to have known you and served with you.
That AWACS sound an aweful lot like an A-10 Thunderbolt when it was doing a flyby 😆
I live near Giebelstadt, Germany where 159th Aviation Regiment was stationed at the time, I still remember this beeing on the local News.
I flew on those helicopters a few months before that happened. Great rundown. I had never heard all those details. Very sad incident.
Pilots were so thirsty to shoot something down, they failed to identify their own helicopters, the saddest part is that most everyone involved got away without punishment
I was in a HQ job at the time of this incident. My top boss was the top Air Force General overseeing the AOR. 9AF/CENTAF/CC. At the time it happened many of us wondered how in the heck could this have happened....Friendly Fire. But as the investigation progressed, as typical, it was a long line of mistakes.
quite baffling how such an event can manage to slip through so many cracks of what's considered a rigorous array of redundancies and exhaustive SOPs in place at the time. but i suppose there's no way to truly conquer the fog of war and human imperfections even in today
TAOR - Tactical Area of Operational Responsibility
thx
Really like this format. Well done!
Couldnt hear you over the sound effects
I'm surprised the helicopters didn't radio when they got swooped twice or when the first one was shot down. I think this is one of those situations warning shots would have actually made sense too given they were enforcing the no fly zone and the helicopters presented no real threat.
regarding the warning shot... the f15s were advised by the AWACS to set weapons hot, on top of the pilots being convinced that the helicopters were hinds. everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. there was no reason for them in their situation to provide a warning shot
@@migdonalds On their level, it wasn't their place. But given the context of that no fly zone arrangement, ROE from much higher should have advised it when this mismatched. Give them 1 chance to land or turn around. Surely the helicopters would have radioed in an emergency when a burst of 20mm rained down in front of them and alerted everyone that something was wrong.
@@winstonsyme7672 if the pilots were convinced that they saw an enemy, and were not told of any friendly presence in the area, then there would be no reason for them to even get within gun range. although they are still partly responsible as they pulled the trigger. its one of those situations where everyone that day made some kind of error that contributed to the incident
@@migdonalds They casually buzzed the helicopters twice, well within gun range. At least 1 pass within 500ft.
Given that they were enforcing a no fly zone and not in warfare, yes, taping the trigger as they were already making their pass over the helicopters would have provided no additional danger and sent the universal air traffic control signal of "you're leaving this airspace one way or another." triggering any non-hostile aircraft to turn around or land and triggered any friendly aircraft to get on the radio screaming holy hell.
This is how airspace intrusions are normally handled. 1 aircraft sits back with a missile lock on the intruding aircraft watching for hostile action while the other buzzes, then fires warning shots, then falls back out of the way for the covering aircraft to take their shot.
Yes, everyone failed all the way top to bottom including the helicopter crew. I've posted on that as well. But it doesn't take away from any individual failure.
Wonder how well those pilots sleep
Probably not very well.
What about the us pilot who cut a cable supporting a cable car in Italy back in the 90's ?
@@calahan59 The EA-6 Prowler?
@@schweizerluchs7146 yes
@@calahan59 That surely would be interesting
A lot of people from my college remember this incident. One of the victims (1Lt Laura Piper) was the first female graduate from our college to be killed in action and she was killed by a fellow Air Force officer.
My mom is friends with her parents. They all went to high school together. I'm reading her mother's book about the incident now.
@@someonerandom256 Name of the book?
I knew Lt Piper at Incirlik AB.
That's why I'm here to watch this.
This is a really good video. Air Force will use it for training and not pay you.
I've already been told by a guy at Nellis that their pilots are using some of my tutorial vids for training. Fine with me :)
@@grimreapers WOW mad respect :)
Hope they also take your safety-advices to heart ;)
ok is this not the AWAC's fault mostly? like how do you not communicate when its your job to do so
each video gets better, keep it up GR and Super Cap
thx
As a prior 60 crew chief. This really hits home and scares the ever loving shit out of me. To think this was never taught to us in training or even basic history. 😳
Nothing chicky about this video, I really enjoyed it, you did really good job, A+, specially me being an American it was really good for learning this way.
Damn going out by friendly fire is truly a scary thought.
it looks like everybody in the story have a brain fark that day? sounds like a third world air force in action.
here comes the question, did anyone had to be sent to military court, go to jail for that 26 lives?
I like the way you did this reenactment well done
How could someone get confused between hawk and hind 😖
The F-15C pilot had obviously never seen a BH with external tanks before. Not an excuse though. Like someone else said the lead Eagle driver saw what he wanted to see and the AWACS crew let him down big time.
One of the most qualified people in the world and his wingman got confused; so I'd conclude that it's pretty easy.
Edit: I'd downvote my own nonsense comment. My point was it's not so easy, and I missed a glaring typo.
@@keit006 It's really not though. This was a failure of military intelligence, those pilots should have been briefed on the Iraqi paint schemes. Knowing how to identify enemy vehicles, ships, and aircraft is a basic skill vehicle commanders and pilots are trained for, but the Gulf War was a sudden affair so obviously Iraqi specific instruction wasn't provided to these guys. And they most certainly know what a UH-60 looks like with external tanks, but they may have never seen one in that configuration from the cockpit (it's gonna look different than just seeing it in photos or from the ground).
There were a lot of problems with the way the F-15 pilots handled the intercept that this video didn't really touch on, the pilots were being cowboys and not following procedure and that is the primary reason for the mistake. Equal blame to the AWACS though.
@@MrMattumbo I'm picking up what you're putting down. Sure VID is a basic skill, but basic skills can be really difficult under some circumstances. This story ain't about the VID. It's about the decisions, events, and errors that led to this VID.
@@lenn55 they also may already be thinking it may be a hind and merely seeing the little stubs may have confirmed a bias they already had
what an unfortunate event... great job on the video!
RIP. Over confident pilots minds already made up to shoot down choppers.
Great work of you guys on such a tragedy :(
RIP o7
How could anyone mistake a blackhawk for a Hind?
Especially a USAF personal?
Trigger-happy flyboy.
As was stated in the video, a Blackhawk with external fuel pods could be mistaken for a Hind to an untrained eye, especially at 500 kts.
External pods are not common on Blackhawks, and the F-15 pilots were unaware they existed.
@@MOTO809 External pods are very common on Blackhawks for carrying more fuel.
@@mr_beezlebub3985 In wartime, maybe. I spent 13 years on an airfield with an extremely busy Army aviation training site. Only once did I see a Blackhawk with external fuel pods. Since fighter pilots only see about 2 years of training, they may not be savvy about the difference.
@@MOTO809 Wrong on all accounts. A hind is half as wide as a Blackhawk. We would teach those pilots that Blackhawks looks like tadpoles from above and a Hind was more like a praying mantis. They were also trained DAILY on visual recognition, which included Blackhawks with underwing tanks and every other aircraft that could possibly operate in that area (friendly and enemy).
Love how you did the video (lot of respect)👍👍
Great way of telling this story, IMO worked really well! :D (Also Operation Wooden Leg video idea)
i would only add to that to lower or normalize the game volume, at certain parts from the awacs exterior view i could hardly understand
rest was top notch
Could do another about the USS Stark attack, and later about the USS Vincennes? Sadly, both episodes are connected... Tks
rgr
Total irresponsible complacency on both the AWACS crew and the F15 pilots ! R.I.P. to all those killed in this unfortunate incident.
Court-martial anyone?
IDK why but the British accent suits well for this kinda thing
No such thing as a British accent!
English* accent lol
In `99 friendly KUB knocked down a Predrag Milutinović`s "Grof" MiG29 coming to land. They thought he was enemy setting up on airfield bomb run even tho he was diverted to said airfield. Fkups happen.
They did a high speed fly by and the choppers didn't brake off. They continued on their path. Those f15 pilots were acting like cowboys. Basic ethics and reasoning, and these pilots didn't have any of that
Trigger-happy assholes with a wish to add a kill mark on their planes.
It's evident that US has failed to punish those responsible. Too bad.
these awacs guys were peak ineptitude
Great work putting this together, tragic event.
RIP to the crew members on both of those aircraft the people that made mistake and did not follow the proper rules of engagement should be punished how can u fire at something without proerly identifing hope the the us militay learns from these mistakes and try to prevent these types of accidents taking place
Trust me those who made mistakes got punishment. The Airforce doesn't suffer people who cause blue on blue lightly.
@@mikegonzalez1821 If I remember right the AF actually tried to sweep it under the rug because the lead pilot was the squadron commander, but it's been awhile since I read in depth about this incident so I could be mismembering.
Rip
Is it weird that i use my private and gaming account at the same time and go back to the same videos?
keep up the good work!!!
I think it speaks volumes about bvr and interdiction ff combatant aircraft systems. Friends? Foes? Last individual who can say has the trigger. No sense in that.
I still don't know how you can miss identity a Blackhawk with a Hind MiL-24. They look nothing alike.
It was the wing tanks that made the diffrence i think - that and the pilots seeing what they wanted to see.
So due to non comm and false id?.
and a bad Mode 1 IFF code.
I have never heard of this incident.. thanks for the lesson.. now I may be speaking out of turn can say what things look form an F-15 but I'm pretty sure I can tell the difference between a Hind and a Black hawk with drop tanks.. dont pilot get silhouette training to I'd various aircraft?
I found it extremely funny how apparently everyone in the comments were somehow involved to this incident..
Hey asshole. Maybe because "everyone" in the comments searched this video because, like me, knew someone killed in this incident.
Fuck off with your ignorant shit.
Great way to go... It would have been easier to follow the story if the sound game was lowered.
So sad - A catalogue of errors / swiss cheese event (probably as a result of everything becoming a bit routine at that point). It does seem surprising that the AWACS controllers didn't communicate with the F15s that there were friendly black hawks in that area. Visual ID has always been difficult and personally I think highly unreliable, I can see how a Black Hawk with wing tanks could look like a hind. But the F15s also seem to not have really considered the possibility of friendly aircraft in the area (probably because the AWACS hadn't suggested it) . Friendly fire has always happened and probably always will, it's incredibly sad, but lots of systemic failings here.
War is hell....mistakes will be made...as long as humans are at the controls. I cannot even tell you how many times I was shot at by friendly forces. Lucky for me they were all bad shots!
But you fly on.
*** Good Narration Mate...
thx
Hey, is AI sling loading possible in the game cuz i'm trying to do a resupply mission were AI Huey's Take off from a Airbase with the sling loaded cargo fly over to a ship and then drop it on the deck. Is that possible and if so can yall do a tutorial on it. thanks.
Will investigate
@@grimreapers :))
That's crazy how you mistaken a hind. It's bigger then the black hawks. That's very disappointing and makes you wonder, does this always happen or it's something deeper to it.
Not that it excuses it, but I suspect it's very difficult to see scale on a helicopter far above the ground. You have nothing for reference.
@@henrikoldcorn but still as a pilot, you should be able to tell your aircraft types. And that's worrying because the pilots probably can't tell an F-18 from a mig 29.
All the technology in the world relies ultimately on human judgement, interpretation and communication. It would appear many responsible people had a collective failure of these, some of it totally unforgivable eg fighter pilots failing at basic visual aircraft recognition. "Fog of War" is a phrase familiar to most of us but this was relatively speaking a highly controlled easy policing operation, not all out armageddon. Unfortunately it would seem policed by gung ho armed to the teeth glory seekers in the cockpits and incompetent twerps in the AWACS and arguably the Black Hawks. I hope lessons were truly learned and my condolences for the bereaved.
For balance lets never forget somebody who let common sense overrule everything the technology was saying: Stanislav Petrov, without whom nobody here on our tiny planet would even have the benefit of civilized life, let alone You Tube.
sad
FNG
Infamous Blue Knights!
ESS system? For the fuel tanks!
Yeah I'd end it differently next time though. Not the best final words for an accident like this.
are the blackhawks ai?
yes
I thought pilots needed good eyesight! Jesus, what a clusterfuck!!
you just narrated the wikipedia article
yes
very
tragic story
Some of those guys were friends of mine.
I hope that Wang's callsign is wanker.
RIP my brothers and sisters
FANTASTIC!!!
Complete incomitance. All hopefully should have been jailed!.
jesus
Like it’s hard. 🤣
AWAC really screwed the pooch
americans pffffff
those f15 did well
Negative
The pilots didn't