U.S. Fire Angers British

Pentagon officials defended their efforts to avoid “friendly fire” deaths Monday after a wounded member of the British Royal Marines related a tale of what he said was an American “cowboy” pilot who opened fire on two British vehicles, killing one soldier.

The sight of the American A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft should have been a relief to the British soldiers who were sitting nervously in their two Scimitar light tanks Friday, watching as Iraqi villagers approached, waving white flags. According to the British soldier, the American pilot came in low, with a rattling noise that sounded like antitank gunfire from his plane’s seven-barrel Gatling gun.

“I believe he was a cowboy,” a furious Lance Cpl. Steven Gerrard told the Times of London two days later from his hospital bed aboard the British ship Argus. “There was a boy of about 12 years old. He was no more than 20 meters away when the Yank opened up. There were all these civilians around. He had absolutely no regard for human life.”

Gerrard, Lt. Alex MacEwan, 25, and trooper Chris Finney, 18, suffered shrapnel wounds and burns. Lance Cpl. Matty Hull, 25, was killed.

The British troops were outraged, and their anger became public when their unit commander broke the ground rules of silence by reminding some observers of an incident in which an American pilot killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Relations between U.S. and British forces were already strained because of an incident in the first days of the war in which a U.S. Patriot battery shot down a British fighter jet. The Pentagon has not yet designated the strike against the Scimitars as a friendly-fire attack.

Of the 26 British troops killed to date, Hull was the fifth killed by his own side and the third killed as the result of American ordnance. Two airmen died in the Patriot attack, and two soldiers were killed by a British tank. None of the 44 American deaths in the war have been the result of action by coalition forces, Pentagon officials said.

The British troops were on a reconnaissance mission 25 miles north of Basra and did not know whether the Iraqis coming toward them intended to surrender. The American pilot, whose name has not been released, made two passes over the scene from what the British soldiers said was about 150 feet above the ground. He began firing from about 1,500 feet away, they said, turning the two Scimitars into flaming metal skeletons.

Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, said Monday that defense officials were saddened to hear that the British soldier’s death may have been the result of friendly fire.

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Times staff writer Hendren reported from Washington and special correspondent Wallace from London. Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Doha, Qatar, contributed to this report.