Apparently friendly bombing incidencts have a glorious history. The Swiss, having used it's anti aircraft guns and German bought Messerschmits to repel the Luftwaffe were forced to fire on American bombers by the end of the war. Haha... history never seemed this much fun in school...

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SO BEGAN THE briefing for the 392d Bombardment Group under 2d Air Division Field Order 618 for 4 March 1945. The mission proved ill fated: it bombed a major city 15 miles within the territory of a neutral power with which the United States was striving to maintain good relations. Five Swiss civilians were killed. Following on previous bombings in border areas, the incident became a cause célèbre. It drew the attention of officers and diplomatic officials to the very top of the bureaucracy, caused an annoyed mission of apology by Gen Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz, and the payment of a multimillion-dollar indemnity by the United States to Switzerland.2 It also provoked a court-martial, apparently the first criminal prosecution ever of US soldiers for acts of friendly fire. Another trial on similar friendly-fire charges would not occur again until decades and wars later,* triggered by an April 1994 downing of two US helicopters in Iraq. That tragedy and the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, by US planes flying for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have provoked questions. How could such events happen? All too easily, as the story of the 1945 episode reveals.

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In Kosovo, senior British commanders claimed that the American-led bombing campaign killed three civilians for every Serbian soldier, leaving the NATO commanders in violation of the Geneva Convention. "Smart weapons" proved to be only as smart as the American pilots who fired them, men often subject to abject intelligence work that presented them with faulty targets.

The U.S. military industry has a vested interest in convincing the American people that the sort of wonder weapons they regularly see at the movies actually work in real life. When Mel Gibson or Tom Cruise fires a missile, it picks out the bad guy in the street, leaving crowds of barefoot children happily munching their cheeseburgers. In the real world, there are no such friendly weapons. Some of the vaunted smart weapons used in Kosovo missed that country altogether and landed in Bulgaria.

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"Smart weapons" proved to be only as smart as the American pilots who fired them,

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