Mistaken-Bombing Pilots Face Charges

The Air Force said Friday it recommended that two F-16 pilots face criminal charges for their role in a mistaken bombing last April that killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

The highly unusual criminal charges by the Air Force against Illinois Air National Guard pilots Maj. Harry Schmidt and Maj. William Umbach followed a long investigation of the April 18 bombing.

Both men have been recalled to active duty to face the charges, the Pentagon said.

Schmidt was piloting the fighter that dropped a 500-pound bomb on the Canadian soldiers. He is charged with four counts of manslaughter and eight counts of assault. He also is charged with failing to exercise appropriate flight discipline and not complying with the U-S military's rules for firing weapons in Afghanistan.

Umbach was the flight commander in charge of Schmidt. The Pentagon says he's charged with negligently failing to exercise appropriate flight command and control and to ensure compliance with the rules for firing on a target.

A joint U.S.-Canadian investigation was completed during the summer and officials said then that the two men were responsible for the "friendly fire" deaths because they had not exercised proper procedures and due caution.

The U.S. Central Command publicly released the basic findings of the investigation in June but did not release details, explaining then that it needed more time to remove classified information from the report.

A 1,500-page report on the investigation of one of the worst such incidents of the Afghan war determined that Maj. Harry Schmidt of the Illinois Air National Guard did not take time to assess properly the threat on the ground before dropping a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on Canadian troops conducting a night military exercise near Kandahar.

It also accused fellow F-16 pilot and flight leader Maj. William Umbach of failure to exercise due leadership as the head of the two-aircraft flight.

Because Schmidt and Umbach are members of the Illinois Air National Guard and are no longer mobilized under federal authority, they would have to be recalled to active duty to face the charges.

The pilots said at the time that they were not aware of the exercise and thought they were being fired at. But investigators said a U.S. AWACS (airborne warning and control system) radar aircraft directing the flight had told the two men to delay any attack while checks were being made.

In April, both President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien expressed deep regret about the incident, as the Canadian public clamored for answers.

The bombing of the Canadian troops on April 17 was the first time since the Korean War that Canadian soldiers had died in a combat zone.

Investigators determined that the members of Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry were in no way responsible for the incident when they were bombed while conducting a night live-fire training exercise on the ground near Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan.

Umbach got permission from the AWACS to determine the precise location of what the flight thought was surface-to-air fire. While the lead pilot was trying to get those coordinates, the pilot of the second F-16 requested permission to fire on the location.

The AWACS told the pilots to stand by, but Schmidt provided the coordinates and then radioed that he was "rolling in, in self-defense," according to investigators.

The investigation that was completed in June determined that Schmidt and Umbach were largely to blame for the mistaken attack, although it also found undisclosed problems in the pilots' command structure.

The decision on disciplinary action was left to Lt. Gen. Michael Moseley, the senior Air Force officer in Central Command. In August, however, that responsibility was transferred to Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force, based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Lawyers for Schmidt and Umbach had claimed Moseley was predisposed to find the pilots guilty.