Did Allies kill GIs in D-Day training horror?

Guardian Unlimited (UK) ^ | Sunday May 16, 2004 | Mark Townsend

[Leisler]

Yup, that's it. thx

[neverdem]

I believe the History Channel is owned by Disney, so take that for what it's worth.

[Leisler]

Without some sort of adapter, occluding the barrel and allowing gas pressures to buildup to such an extent that they would overcome parts friction, expel the cartridge, and compress the bolt enough to allow it to then pick up the next round from the magazine...well...they, Thompson and such, wouldn't work.

The friction of the bullet in the barrel, and the time it is in the barrel, produces the force necessary to operate the mechanism. Belt fed guns, have even more moving parts, thus more mechanical friction, part inertia, ect.

Blank adapter for .30 Browning Machine Gun

[BluH2o]

Tragic - but that's war. My own grandfather told me he saw more men lost in training accidents than he did in combat.

Another tragic military incident related to D-Day that was hushed up, and to this day, has received little mention. Early 1944 a large airborne drop exercise off the panhandle of Florida went astray. The night time exercise, under full moon, was intended to drop paratroopers on either St. George Island or Dog Island (not sure which). The idea was to make the drop in the direction along the longest axis of the island (east-west) ... which gave the paratroopers the largest landing zone. The aircraft approached the island drop zone at a right angle, north to south, resulting in numerous (believed to be in the hundreds) of paratroopers landing in Apalachicola Bay and drowning. True story related to me by a WWII vet who commanded one of the rescue (recovery) craft dispatched from Tampa Bay to help in the recovery of bodies.

[11Bush]

You need to separate the real from the movie version of war.

[fourdeuce82d]

The dirty little secret of the Gulf War is that "friendly fire" accounted for 13,974 of the 58,226 names etched on the walls of black granite panels.

Here all the time I thought we only lost a few hundred total in BOTH gulf wars.

Besides how did they get such an exact figure for the VIETNAM WAR.

umm... I suspect a big part of it invovled not sniffing glue and doing beer bongs, licking Australian Toads, nor huffing gas from parked cars.

For those that DID do those things, let's try to imagine how those numbers might come up- first and foremost are those radio calls- "one of our guys got killed, please come pick him up."

This kind of thing is logged.

Let's imagine another scenario- E2 snuffy is dicking around with his rifle, fucks up, and shoots his friend- "damn- does that hurt? It's looks painful. Bet it's gonna leave a mark."

survey says- that gets logged too.

Another scenario- PVT FumDuck flips a track...and dies. That too gets logged.

It all gets logged- either "yup- saw him die" or "yup- saw the plane impact with no chute popping out" or "well, he was alive for a while, but it's been forty years."

Wouldn't surprise me that the "names on the wall" are off by one to two hundred- that would work out to an accuracy rate of 99.017%...but that would be stretching it.

Finally, odd person, your numbers for the gulf war are beyond ludicrous, they exceed rediculousness, and they fail even to match up the the efforts we would expect from an idiot studying to be a moron...and finding the coursework hard sledding.

Thanks for playing, go somewhere far away, and we will call you when we are bored and need comic relief. In the meantime, screw tinfoil- wrap your head in tungsten. You need it.

[flying Elvis]

If the beach was not used for any other training exercises, a metal detector will solve the "mystery."

[Justa]

"The English press does tend to be overly dramatic at times.."

You mean like... propaganda?

< /condescending smirk >

Hey, lets get back to Abu Gharib, Al Sadr and the holy mosques of the holy neighborhoods of the holy cities of Iraq with the holy cemetaries being attacked by US tanks.

[CWOJackson]

We can't do that until we know which way the wind is blowing...and how to spin the story so it does the most damage to the U.S. effort.

[Commie Basher]

Do your remember the movie, I think, "It's A Wonderful Life?" There was a actor, who won an Academe Award, and had two arms blown off?

I think you mean The Best Years of Our Lives, the film about returning WW 2 vets.

[Nov3]

That was one of the most pitiful flames I have seen in my years at FR. No doubt, in your social caste composed of marginally literate clock-punching types, your post would be considered witty repartee, but in educated company, it is, well, embarrassing. It is evidence of the continuing decline in IQ this site has experienced since around the 2000 election. Computers have gotten too cheap, bringing people entirely unequipped for educated discussion onto this site.

[fourdeuce82d]

That was one of the most pitiful flames I have seen in my years at FR. But I have to admit, confusing your response to MK's casualty estimates wiht MK's post is pretty pitiful.

Mea Culpa, and my apologies.

but didn't you find the "studying to be an idiot...etc." kind of funny. I thought it was a fun line.

Regardless, I was wrong to apply it to you, and I apologize.

[Nov3]

Hey I apologize too. I must admit your post stung. I like the way it started out almost cordial and built up to a flame;-)

Have a good night - I just got on to shut the computer down.

[learning_curve]

Two things:
1) It may sound far fetched but what if those shooting the live ammo knew they were shooting live ammo and it was deliberate? Can someone tell me if this is at all likely? (from sources other than the history channel :) ) Have looked up Slapton on the web and mostly only find reference to the German attack.
2) Someone earlier compared the war on terrorism with WWII and the respective KIA numbers. Think the link is tenuous, WWII was an old style war where you knew the borders and your enemy was a country not a free moving unknown group. Its not like all Iraqi citizens are the enemy and its not like the war on Iraq led to the liberation of the people from an occupier - it led to the occupation of that country.

[rrrod]

There have been accounts of live fire exercises pre Dday for yrs..this is just a new liberal twist on things!

[wtc911]

All you said plus the sunken LSTs. Agreed, BS.

[monkeywrench]

" it led to the occupation of that country."

And, now, we're in a really great position to take on the really bad guys.