| One, the Sun is a tabloid.
Two, the Sun is wrong.
They state that one of the errors is that the artillery strikes never landed, that's false.
The strikes do land, and you can see them land. I rewound the played multiple times to be sure I wasn't looking at glare from the sun.
Also, they are sure to ask Manila Hotel if there are friendlies in the area because they see the orange panels, and MH clears them to fire as they say there are no friendlies.
They ask to verify again and MH affirms their targets.
Don't believe what The Sun tells you.
These guys did screw up, but think about their situation...
They rely on the ground intelligence, not their eyes.
When a pilot calls in vehicles, as they did, the ground control's job is to sit and have someone talk to the British command to verify that they have no vehicles in the area. That's the whole reason they clear with ground control in the first place.
MH heard them talk about seeing orange panels and still cleared them and affirmed them to acquire targets.
You know how targets are "acquired"?
Someone in ground control looks at a radar screen a designates a signature as an enemy or friendly. That radar screen modification is fed to the aircraft through telemetry and that is what the pilot sees.
The pilots don't magically aim bombs using approximations of velocity and range. They look at the ground control designated radar targeting and use the guidance systems to aim the bomb at the target.
Don't think for one second that the pilots are to blame for this.
Someone on the ground screwed up. |