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Hey, not all friendly fire victims die, they are just injured as well.
So total casualties, Dead and wounded in Vietnam is 211,454 American troops.
You are correct, 8,000 friendly fire incidents. The important thing there is incidents, not deaths.
That is 3%
You cant take 8K incidents, and divide it by the number of dead and get an accurate percentage, not all friendly fire incidents result in death.
And you are also correct that friendly fire is not the result of some idiot shooting you in the back. It happens when your buddy didn't throw the grenade far enough, so you caught a little shrapnel. Or you winged one of your guys because the timing on the bounding movements got out of whack and someone moved or shot when they weren't supposed to. There is incompetence involved sometimes, and other times it is purely accidental...Such as a call for CAS, and the bomb run gets a little too close and one of the good guys gets hurt or killed. The pilot didn't do that on purpose, but it had to be done to stop the enemy, that's why it is sometimes called danger close.
I don't need anymore education on how friendly fire works...Like I said: Been there, done that, and trained guys to do the same. And yes people can be trained to be more conscious. You cant just pick and choose some of the numbers to boost the percentages.
So total casualties, Dead and wounded in Vietnam is 211,454 American troops.
You are correct, 8,000 friendly fire incidents. The important thing there is incidents, not deaths.
That is 3%
You cant take 8K incidents, and divide it by the number of dead and get an accurate percentage, not all friendly fire incidents result in death.
And you are also correct that friendly fire is not the result of some idiot shooting you in the back. It happens when your buddy didn't throw the grenade far enough, so you caught a little shrapnel. Or you winged one of your guys because the timing on the bounding movements got out of whack and someone moved or shot when they weren't supposed to. There is incompetence involved sometimes, and other times it is purely accidental...Such as a call for CAS, and the bomb run gets a little too close and one of the good guys gets hurt or killed. The pilot didn't do that on purpose, but it had to be done to stop the enemy, that's why it is sometimes called danger close.
I don't need anymore education on how friendly fire works...Like I said: Been there, done that, and trained guys to do the same. And yes people can be trained to be more conscious. You cant just pick and choose some of the numbers to boost the percentages.
