Maj. Harry Schmidt Reprimanded

An Air Force general issued a scathing reprimand to Maj. Harry Schmidt Tuesday, saying he had "acted shamefully" on the night of a friendly-fire bombing that killed four and wounded eight Canadian soldiers.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson found Schmidt guilty of dereliction of duty for the accident, which occurred in April 2002 in Afghanistan.

Schmidt, 38, of Sherman, will lose one month's base pay, about $5,600, and won't fly again when he returns to the Illinois Air National Guard.

"You acted shamefully," Carlson wrote in his letter to Schmidt, faulting the longtime, Top Gun-trained pilot for "exhibiting arrogance and a lack of flight discipline."

On April 17, 2002, Schmidt and a second pilot, Maj. William Umbach, were flying F-16s near Kandahar when Schmidt saw flashes on the ground coming from Canadians who were firing weapons on a training range.

Schmidt mistook the Canadians for Taliban forces, declared self-defense and dropped the 500-pound bomb that killed Sgt. Marc Leger, Pvt. Richard Green, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer and Pvt. Nathan Smith. Eight other soldiers were wounded, some permanently.

Carlson criticized Schmidt for disobeying a "hold fire" order and dismissed Schmidt's assertion that he had acted in self-defense. Carlson said Schmidt should have taken evasive action and remained at a safe distance instead of closing in on the perceived threat.

"Your actions indicate that you used your self-defense declaration as a pretext to strike a target," Carlson wrote.

The general also wrote that he was "astounded" by Schmidt's lack of remorse toward the Canadian victims.

Schmidt believed that rocket-propelled munitions threatened his plane and Umbach's, according to Gittins. By invoking his right to self-defense, Schmidt overrode the hold-fire order, the attorney has said.

"If Harry used self-defense as a pretext and recklessly bombed the people on the ground, that's murder," Gittins said Tuesday.

And Gittins angrily denied that Schmidt had failed to show remorse, saying that the pilot indeed had made "a heartfelt apology for the accident" at a hearing last week.

Carlson's ruling followed a private hearing Thursday at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where Schmidt and his lawyers made a presentation about the accident. Carlson is commander of the 8th Air Force at Barksdale.

Gittins said he would appeal the punishment to Gen. Hal Hornburg, commander of Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va.

Schmidt's wife, Lisa, called the loss of pay trivial compared to the letter of reprimand that "slandered my husband."

"We're just absolutely appalled by the verbiage in that statement," Lisa Schmidt said.

U.S. military officials informed the Canadian victims' families of Schmidt's punishment.

"We got what we wanted; we got his wings," said Claire Leger, mother of Marc Leger, one of the four soldiers killed. "But we don't have our son back."

Leger and her husband, Richard, who live in Stittsville, Ontario, each wrote a letter to Carlson last year. Claire Leger said in her letter to the general that she had never wanted Schmidt to go to prison.

But Tuesday, she criticized a statement Schmidt had made to the victims' families at a military hearing in January 2003.

In 2002, the Air Force charged both Schmidt and Umbach with manslaughter, assault and dereliction of duty, for which each could have faced up to 64 years in military prison if convicted.

In June 2003, Carlson offered Schmidt a choice between a court-martial or non-judicial punishment.

Umbach, of Petersburg, received a letter of reprimand at that time and was allowed to retire from the Guard. He commanded the two-jet mission on the night of the accident.

Carlson ordered a court-martial for Schmidt on a single dereliction-of-duty charge, for which the pilot faced the possibility of up to six months in prison if convicted.

Lawyers on both sides were still preparing for trial when, on June 24, the Air Force announced that Schmidt had withdrawn his request for a court-martial and asked for the non-judicial punishment instead.

Gittins said Harry and Lisa Schmidt had wearied of the dragging legal proceedings.

Schmidt and Umbach were serving in Afghanistan with the 183rd Fighter Wing, based in Springfield.

Actually, the real truth is those guys were in no danger and could have unassed the AO if they felt threatened by the fire

Instead they chose to drop with almost zero information about the ground situation when they were not under anything approaching imminent threat

Killed a bunch of good people needlessly

Cowboys, looking for something to paint on the side of their planes

Air Force is losing a lot of respect in my eyes. They should have courtmartialed both of these guys

The power Air Force pilots hold is too awesome to trust to clowns that are looking for any old excuse to drop a bomb

All the best

Qatar 6

The following is the text of a letter of reprimand issued Tuesday by Lt.-Gen. Bruce Carlson of the U.S. 8th Air Force to Illinois Air National Guard F-16 pilot Maj. Harry Schmidt, who dropped a bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight others on April 17, 2002, in Afghanistan.

You are hereby reprimanded. You flagrantly disregarded a direct order from the controlling agency, exercised a total lack of basic flight discipline over your aircraft, and blatantly ignored the applicable rules of engagement and special instructions.

Your wilful misconduct directly caused the most egregious consequences imaginable, the deaths of four coalition soldiers and injury to eight others. The victims of your callous misbehaviour were from one of our staunch allies in Operation Enduring Freedom and were your comrades-in-arms.

You acted shamefully on 17 April, 2002 over Tarnak Farms, Afghanistan, exhibiting arrogance and a lack of flight discipline.

When your flight lead warned you to "make sure it's not friendlies" and the Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft controller directed you to "stand by" and later to "hold fire," you should have marked the location with your targeting pod. Thereafter, if you believed, as you stated, you and your leader were threatened, you should have taken a series of evasive actions and remained at a safe distance to await further instructions from AWACS.

Instead, you closed on the target and blatantly disobeyed the direction to "hold fire." Your failure to follow that order is inexcusable. I do not believe you acted in defence of Maj. Umbach or yourself. Your actions indicate that you used your self-defence declaration as a pretext to strike a target, which you rashly decided was an enemy firing position, and about which you had exhausted your patience in waiting for clearance from the Combined Air Operations Center to engage. You used the inherent right of self-defence as an excuse to wage your own war.

In your personal presentation before me on 1 July, 2004, I was astounded that you portrayed yourself as a victim of the disciplinary process without expressing heartfelt remorse over the deaths and injuries you caused to the members of the Canadian Forces.

In fact, you were obviously angry that the United States Air Force had dared to question your actions during the 17 April 2002 tragedy. Far from providing any defence for your actions, the written materials you presented to me at the hearing only served to illustrate the degree to which you lacked flight discipline as a wingman of COFFEE Flight on 17 April, 2002.

Through your arrogance, you undermined one of the most sophisticated weapons systems in the world, consisting of the Combined Air Operations Center, the Airborne Warning and Control System, and highly disciplined pilots, all of whom must work together in an integrated fashion to achieve combat goals.

The United States Air Force is a major contributor to military victories over our nation's enemies because our pilots possess superior flight discipline. However, your actions on the night of 17 April 2002 demonstrate an astonishing lack of flight discipline.

You were blessed with an aptitude for aviation, your nation provided you the best aviation training on the planet, and you acquired combat expertise in previous armed conflicts.

However, by your gross poor judgment, you ignored your training and your duty to exercise flight discipline, and the result was tragic. I have no faith in your abilities to perform in a combat environment.

I am concerned about more than your poor airmanship; I am also greatly concerned about your officership and judgment.

Our Air Force core values stress "integrity first." Following the engagement in question, you lied about the reasons why you engaged the target after you were directed to hold fire and then you sought to blame others. You had the right to remain silent, but not the right to lie.

In short, the final casualty of the engagement over Kandahar on 17 April 2002 was your integrity.

Canadian Ego - what the heck are you going on about. My friends were killed and seriously injured. My best friend was one of the most seriously wounded and would have died too had it not been for the Canadian Medics and the American medical staff that treated and flew him to Germany.
Had they been in contact with the enemy it would have been difficult to deal with but than would have been the casualties of war. However they were not and Schmidt went against the order to hold fire, followed improper actions when threatened, and turned and dropped the bomb that will never go away. At least Umbach took his punishment like a man and for that I can let him go. But as for Schmidt his arrogance blinds him and he fights all his charges. Him I will never let go, and I hope to hell one day he pays for what he did, that he is haunted by this for the rest of his life.
I give my name and rank as I will not hide behind a screen name. I am in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and also have served in the Canadian Airborne Regiment and served in Somalia in 92-93. And I will say that what happened to your Rangers in Mogadishu and the SF soldier killed near our base in Belet Huen, enraged me and I wanted justice for them, it made my blood boil. And you would not find me talking about American ego. Don't let our nationality blind us, but lets focus on whats right or wrong and Schmidt is wrong and Umbach at least tried to fix a wrong and took the punishment.

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