Was "friendly fire" more of a danger during times when warriors fought in one big group?

I don’t know if it was more common back then, but it is still very common. There are lots of stories of it from Vietnam and it is why Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan a few years ago.

@KatawaGrey …in the heat of battle with blood and smoke and stuff flying everywhere, can each side tell its own soldiers from those of the other side.…

Who cares? It’s a battle – killing’s great and fun, dying in battle is an honour. Just ask a Klingon. The more the merrier; what’s a little collateral damage compared to the hours minutes of pleasure one gets when chopping away with a battle axe, heads flying.

From what I know of old British wars, they tried to avoid that by having all of their soldiers line up side by side and fire at once. Then again, sometimes they had a second line behind the first that depended upon the first line to duck at the right time. I wonder if they all did indeed duck in time?

In the old days, a fighter usually had to be more cognizant of whom he was wanting to kill as they had one jab at it. It was more of an effort. War anymore is way more dangerous and confusing. Things happen at the speed of light and accidents happen. I think in every war in the history of man there has been friendly fire incidents. it’s confusing

@GeorgeGee Not really, even as recent as the Civil War. Look

Edit: ^ wanting to kill You shouldn’t use the Stative verb in the progressive form. War anymore is way more dangerous and confusing. Uh, what was that about?

Is English your second language? Where are you from?

:-)

figure it out dude everyone else has.

“Friendly fire” has always been a problem, which is why many armies wore uniforms that were radically different from those of other nations. In modern warfare friendly fire incidents are rarer, but often more catastrophic, since they more often occur due to atrillery fire or air-dropped bombs.

@woodcutter

Done.

You might try using the @ sign to show who you are writing to. Grammar, well…

Everyone? You’re really popular. I’ll follow your posts and questions from now on.

Um @zen, the British didn’t fight in the Civil war.

[mod says] Flame off, guys. No need to make this personal.

(Looks like an example of friendly fire in the heat of battle to me)

@GeorgeGee: I was more referring to times when warriors used swords and other non-long-distance-projectiles, but I have wondered about British soldiers shooting each other in the back.

@woodcutter: You’re right, but I wonder if because the weapons required a lot more power, would, say, a wide sword swing lend itself more to harming anyone in the path, including any allies. Also, if you realized that you were swinging at an ally, it would be a lot harder to stop as opposed to simply aiming somewhere else with a gun.

@KatawaGrey I would say modern weapons because of relatively little thought or strength compared to an axe or sword it takes to set a projectile in motion. It’s one of the big “gripes” the anti gun crowd uses to promote just how dangerous they are for accidental shootings. Or with the press of a button a fighter can now deliver hundreds of projectiles in a second and its always too late to pull them back if a mistake was realized. Depleted uranium tipped rounds that will penetrate almost anything that someone can hide behind- coming from a multi barreled cannon mounted in the nose of a jet fighter is going to do maximum damage in a 2 second burst (hundreds of rounds coming in). Belt fed machine guns and grenades that don’t discriminate make it easy to get the wrong guys. Anything involving indirect fire where the ones pulling the trigger can’t even see their targets have a high potential for a mistake. With all the nasty implements of warfare at our disposal now it amazes me this disaster doesn’t happen more often.