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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 Marinegruppe West (Kriegsmarine). Despite the report to the admiral on duty, critical information was never relayed between the key parties of the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.
The Kriegsmarine failed to notify the Luftwaffe of their operation planned simultaneously with the air sorties. Therefore, the pilots were not informed that German destroyers would be operating in the area. Similarly, the captains of the German destroyers were not informed that there could be Luftwaffe planes overflying their formations.
On February 22nd, 1940, six destroyers steamed into the North Sea and were quickly spotted and tailed by German aircraft. Due to the lack of information, the German destroyers failed to identify the planes as friendly and opened fire with anti-air cannons. Seeing six destroyers firing at them from below, the German planes reported enemy ships and returned with bombers for an attack.
