Number one, the man who shot down his own rescue. It is February 1991. The Gulf War is three weeks old. A US Army Blackhawk helicopter is flying a routine mission near the Iraq Kuwait border. On board are two pilots and five soldiers. They are not in a combat zone. They are flying a marked coalition aircraft on a known route.

Two US Air Force A10 Warthogs spot them from above. The A10 pilots radio in. They report what they believe is an Iraqi helicopter flying in restricted airspace. They ask for confirmation. The response they get back is unclear. One pilot decides not to wait. He fires. The first Maverick missile hits the tail rotor. The helicopter spins.

The second missile hits the fuselage. All seven men on board are killed instantly. When investigators piece together what happened, the A-10 pilot had misidentified the Blackhawk because he was flying too fast at too low in altitude and had not cross-cheed the identification markings. The Blackhawks had the correct IFFF identification, friend or foe.

transponders activated the entire time. The transponders were working. The pilot just didn’t check. The incident becomes known as the Blackhawk shootown. It remains the deadliest friendly fire incident in US military history during the Gulf War. Both A-10 pilots are court marshaled. Both are acquitted. Number two, the submarine that sank its own fleet.

It is 1942 the Pacific. The United States has been at war for less than a year. The USS Grunion is a brand new submarine, one of the most advanced in the US fleet. She is sent on her first combat patrol near the Illusian Islands to hunt Japanese ships. She fires her torpedoes. One of them circles back.

The exact cause is never officially confirmed, but the evidence strongly suggests the Grunion was sunk by her own Mark 27 torpedo. A weapon with a documented defect that caused it to arc back toward the firing vessel at close range. 70 men go down with the ship. The Navy knows about the torpedo defect.

There are internal reports. There are complaints from other submarine commanders who had near misses. The problem is not corrected quickly enough. Over the course of World War II, defective American torpedoes, either running too deep, failing to detonate, or circling back, contribute to dozens of failed missions and an unknown number of casualties.

The Grunian is listed as missing for over 60 years. Her wreck is found in 2007 by her crew’s own descendants, who fund a private search expedition using sonar. She is sitting at 1,000 ft. Number three, the village that didn’t know the war had started. It is December 1941, 4 days after Pearl Harbor.

American forces are on edge across the Pacific. Every radar blip is a potential enemy aircraft. Every ship on the horizon is a potential threat. The USS Saratoga, one of the Navy’s most important aircraft carriers, is sailing near Hawaii. Her escorts are watching for Japanese submarines. A group of friendly aircraft approaches.

Someone on a destroyer opens fire. Within seconds, multiple ships in the formation join in. The barrage lasts several minutes before the order comes to stop. The aircraft are American. Three pilots are killed. Several planes go down into the ocean. The incident is classified almost immediately and kept out of official records for decades.

Post-war historians only piece together the full picture through declassified documents released in the 1990s. The officers responsible are never publicly identified. Number four, the patrol that got too far ahead. It is November 1944. The Battle of Herkin Forest, Germany. The 28th Infantry Division has been fighting in the forest for weeks.

The trees are so dense that artillery coordinates are impossible to verify accurately. Maps are outdated. Radio communications cut in and out. A patrol from the 112th Infantry Regiment moves ahead of the main line. They advance farther than command realizes. Artillery is called in on what is believed to be a German position.

It lands directly on the patrol. 19 men are killed. Dozens more are wounded. The Herkin Forest campaign is later described by military historians as one of the worst managed operations of the entire European theater. The US Army suffers 33,000 casualties, killed, wounded, and captured over three months of fighting in a forest roughly the size of a midsized city.

A significant portion of those casualties come from friendly fire, miscommunication, and artillery errors. The forest is taken. It holds no strategic value significant enough to justify the cost. The general who orders the campaign is never reprimanded. Number five, the platoon bombed by their own air force twice.

It is March 2002, Afghanistan. Operation Anaconda. A US special forces team is pinched down on a rgeline called Takar. The fighting is intense. They have already lost men. They radio for close air support. An AC130 gunship responds. Due to a communication error in the targeting coordinates, the gunship opens fire on a position that includes American soldiers. Three men are wounded.

The mission continues. 6 hours later, a second air strike is called in on a nearby position. The coordinates are again slightly off. Two more Americans are hit. Takur becomes known as the battle of Robert’s Ridge. Eight Americans are killed in total, one during the initial helicopter insertion, the rest in the hours of combat that follow.

The friendly fire incidents are investigated. The findings site confusion in the command structure and inadequate communication protocols. No charges are filed. Number six, the convoy that never made it out. It is 2003 Iraq, the early weeks of the invasion. A US Marine convoy is pushing north toward Baghdad. The column stretches for miles.

Aircraft are providing overhead cover. A Navy F/ A18 pilot spots vehicles moving on a road below. He cannot confirm whether they are coalition or Iraqi forces. He fires anyway. The convoy commander’s vehicle takes a direct hit. Marine Captain Benjamin Samos is killed. Two other Marines are wounded.

The pilot had not received updated coordinates. The Marines were operating in a sector that had not been correctly flagged as a friendly zone in the airto ground communication system. An investigation finds the death resulted from a breakdown in coordination. It is classified as a non-combat related incident in early official reports.

Captain Samus’ family spends two years fighting to have his death correctly categorized. They eventually succeed. Number seven, the hospital that was listed as a target. It is October 2015, Kundus, Afghanistan. A USA130 gunship circles the city. Its crew has been given a set of coordinates identified as a Taliban command and control facility.

The coordinates belong to a hospital run by Maids San Frontier. Doctors without borders. The gunship fires for nearly an hour. 42 people are killed. Patients, doctors, nurses. Some are burned in their beds. Some are shot running out of the building. The hospital’s GPS coordinates had been provided to US and Afghan military commanders multiple times before the strike to prevent exactly this situation.

The military later says the coordinates were entered incorrectly into the targeting system. An internal investigation finds 16 military personnel responsible for various errors. None face criminal charges. The most severe punishment handed out is a letter of reprimand. MSF calls it a war crime. They demand an independent international investigation.

The US government refuses. The hospital is eventually rebuilt. It reopens in 2017. These are not anomalies. They are patterns. Every military in history has killed its own people through bad maps, bad radios, bad coordinates, bad decisions made in seconds that can never be taken back.

The ones who die in those seconds don’t get monuments. They don’t get clean explanations. They get investigation reports and letters of reprimand for someone else. That’s the part military history usually skips.