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The Worst Confirmed Friendly Fire Incident In History
A tragic blunder in the North Sea
One of the saddest and most pervasive parts of warfare is friendly fire. Friendly fire happens constantly. In the heat of battle, when emotions are high and information is often short, it becomes easy to mistake a friend for a foe. Many friendly fire incidents are isolated, the result of one man shooting another in the dark. However, occasionally, there are operational errors that end in friendly fire on a massive scale. That is exactly what happened during Operation Wikinger during the early days of World War II.
During the first days of 1940, Germany was planning a naval operation in the North Sea. The plan was to dispatch six destroyers to the area around the Dogger Bank and intercept British trawlers and fishing vessels. Germany suspected that Britain was scouting offshore minefields and using the trawlers as reconnaissance and spy ships. It was a small operation designed to scatter the fishing boats and draw in British naval assets to the area.
At the same time the Kriegsmarine was planning on deploying its destroyer flotilla to the North Sea, the Luftwaffe was planning a routine set of scouting and anti-shipping sorties into the same area. According to the official record, Fliegerkorps X (Luftwaffe) reported their intended flights to…
