The tragedies of the fog of war, but the two planes do not look alike on the ground. Different cowlings, plexiglass nose front, etc.
However, at a distance, they could look similar because of the twin engines. Because a gunner only has a few seconds to sight and shoot, he might not be able to properly identify who is flying towards him.
Today, fighters have radio transponders on them to broadcast an identification signal. SO do our armored vehicles.
Plus I think it was at night.
“mistook Gibson’s plane for a similar German Junkers 88 night-fighter”
My father, who flew in B-24s in the 8th Air Force, recounted a similar story.
Apparently, the intelligence types of his squadron were reviewing bomber camera films (probably shot with a handheld camera from the waist position) when they came across images of a twin engine fighter making a head on approach toward the bomber. Tracers start streaking past the aircraft as it approaches, it pulls up to avoid the fire revealing the planform of a Mosquito, and is promptly raked from nose to tail by the incoming .50 caliber bullets.
Oops!
The aircraft had US markings and apparently was serving some sort of early airborne bomber command and control function for his B-24 group or wing. (Today, we would probably call them FAC (Airborne).) Anyways, after being hit, the Mosquito rolled over on its back and headed for the deck. Can’t remember if he said the crew was able to bail out or not.
What I do remember is that there was regret that the aircraft had been shot down but not a lot of sympathy for the crew: “Any fighter pointing its nose towards a bomber in combat is going to get shot.”
I’d love to ask him further questions about this story (and a great many other things) but he has been dead since 1975.
As for confusing a particular German aircraft type for the Mosquito, consider also the Me-410:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_410
3-view image here: http://www.airwar.ru/image/idop/fww2/me410/me410-1.gif
The Me-410 was a lot more similar in size, layout, etc. However, my understanding is that RAF bomber operations were mostly flown at night; my casual reading mentions Me-410s only as daylight bomber destroyers for the Luftwaffe. Without further details, their different operational employments make it hard to reasonably place a Lancaster in the same airspace over Germany at the same time with an Me-410.
