Having landed from the Gulf of Mexico on 23rd-24th December, the British marched (some have said a mite too cautiously) up the east bank of the Mississippi, until they came up against a hastily constructed defensive line behind the (dry) Bayou Rodrigues at Chalmette, about 8 miles from the city. This was known as "Line Jackson", after the commander of the defending troops, General (subsequently President) Andrew Jackson. Here they began their build-up for a major attack by constructing a number of breastworks for the artillery they were bringing up.

Unfortunately for the British, Jackson was an experienced campaigner, and had chosen his defensive position well. He had a clear flat field of fire to his front, the Mississippi anchoring his right flank, and an impracticable swamp anchoring his left. Along this 1000 yard line, he had constructed a fortified rampart of earth and cotton bales, and distributed about 4000 men (better than one man per foot). He had also turned some brick kilns on the bank of the Mississippi into a forward strongpoint, and had eight artillery batteries with a total of 14 guns supporting the defences from behind. As if that were not enough, the Americans also had the sloop USS Louisiana (18 guns, of which 16 heavy) on the river itself, and General David B. Morgan had a further 1000 men and another 16 guns on the far (west) bank of the river. For his part, Pakenham had nearly 7000 troops, organised into two assault brigades, one on each wing, a headquarters brigade in the centre, and a flanking brigade ready to be ferried across to the west bank of the Mississippi to try and break Line Morgan and establish a line of fire into the American rear. Here is the British order of battle:

• General John Keane commanded the left wing brigade, comprising elements of the 1st (West India), 7th (Royal Fusiliers), 43rd (Monmouthshire Light Infantry), and 93rd (Sutherland Highlanders) Regiments, and half of the 95th (Rifle) Regiment as a skirmishing line.
• General Samuel Gibbs commanded the right wing brigade, comprising elements of the 4th (King's Own), 5th (West India), 21st (Royal Scots), and 44th (East Essex) Regiments, and the other half of the 95th as a skirmishing line.
• General John Lambert commanded the headquarters brigade, comprising the 14th Light Dragoons (fighting on foot), and the remainder of the 5th, 7th, and 43rd Regiments.
• Lieutenant-Colonel William Thornton commanded the flanking brigade, comprising elements of the 85th (Marquis of Buckingham's Light Infantry) Regiment, supported by 200 Royal Navy sailors and marines.

The attack actually began during the night of the 7th January, because it was vital that Thornton's brigade be got across the river by dawn on the 8th. However, this involved some rather substantial field engineering on Bayou Villeré, another of the dry irrigation ditches, some three miles away from Line Jackson .....

Things soon started to go wrong, despite the valuable additional cover provided by the morning mists. There was particular confusion on the right, where the 44th Regiment under newly promoted Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Mullins had been chosen to lead Gibbs' attack. Thanks to poor staff work and lack of supervisory diligence (for which Mullins was later court martialled), the 44th were unable, when they arrived in the darkness at their jumping off positions, to find the assault materials (ladders and bundles of wattle called "fascines") they had been ordered to take with them. They therefore had to backtrack some 500 yards and were still not in their proper positions when the signal rocket went up. As a result, they not only baulked the advance of the 4th and 21st Regiments, but interfered also with the covering fire being given by the skirmishers of the 95th. This, combined with a concentration of accurate enemy artillery fire and poor discipline, brought general confusion to the field, although some of the 21st and 95th began to establish a foothold on line Jackson at a point known as the bastion.

On the left, Keane's advance began more promisingly. He had sent a mixed battalion of light infantry under Colonel Robert Rennie along the bank of the river to attack the brick kiln redoubt, and these made relatively good progress, taking the redoubt and disabling the three artillery pieces they found there. This placed Keane momentarily in a position of significant tactical advantage, because from there the defence could easily have been "turned" (ie. outflanked and rolled up from one end). In the event, however, Rennie was killed before he could issue the necessary orders and Keane was too far away to take command personally.

In one final attempt to save the day, Keane was now instructed to divert the cream of his command - the 93rd Regiment under Colonel Dale - diagonally from left to right across the front to support Gibbs' attack on the bastion. Needless to say, they suffered high losses in the ever improving light, and, just as they got into position to deal a possibly decisive blow, both Gibbs and Dale were killed. This was followed shortly afterwards by a "wavering" - a loss of stomach for the battle - which resulted in the 4th, 21st, and 44th falling back in confusion (Burrows, 1923).

On the west bank meanwhile ......

..... Thornton was warming to his task. It had taken him an hour after disembarking to move into position opposite the lightly defended American advanced line, but knowing that the American artillery was wreaking havoc on the flank of the main attack, he charged with the minimum of preparation, forcing 300 Louisiana and Kentucky irregulars to fall back to Line Morgan. Then, since it was already 0830hr and the main attack was already in substantial disarray, he regrouped his forces and mounted another all-out bayonet charge on Line Morgan, a miniature version of Line Jackson. This, too, was an outright success, thanks to a decisive "left hook" by the 85th Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Gubbins. Unfortunately, though they captured the American shore batteries, there was no longer any need to set up batteries of their own to enfilade Line Jackson because the main attack had already collapsed. Lambert simply ordered Thornton to disable the captured guns and then withdraw.

British losses on the day were 291 killed, 1262 wounded, and 484 captured or missing, against American losses of 13 killed, 39 wounded, and 19 missing (Hanger, 1999). As the song has it, the British had come off "rather ignominiously" (Donegan, 1959).

 Here are some of the contributory factors:

Burrows, J.W. (1923). The Essex Regiment (1st Battalion) 1741-1919. Southend: Burrows.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854: In this encounter on 25th October 1854, during the defence of Balaclava in the Crimean War, the Light Brigade, one of the British Army's elite cavalry units, was cut to pieces in an ultimately fruitless attack on a well-established and numerically superior Russian position. The Commander-in-Chief on the day was Lord Raglan, commander of all the forces at Balaclava, who 40 years previously had lost an arm at the Battle of Waterloo (legend has it that he called the surgeon back as he walked off with the severed limb, so that he could take the rings off his fingers one last time). The commander of the cavalry was Lieutenant-General the Earl of Lucan, and the commander of the Light Brigade was Lieutenant-General the Earl of Cardigan (Lucan's brother-in-law), who led the charge itself.

Raglan therefore sent down a written order, instructing Lucan as follows:

Having just committed his Heavy Brigade, and seeing little obvious activity on the heights, Lucan did not respond immediately, and so 45 minutes later Raglan impatiently sent down a second written order, as follows:

The orders were conveyed to Lucan by one Captain Nolan, and Raglan was so irritated with the delay that he explicitly directed Nolan to emphasise the need for Lucan to act immediately.  Lucan, however, was down on the valley floor, and could see far less of the strategic situation than could Raglan. Confused as to which "guns" the orders were referring to, he turned on Nolan .....

Here are the two main object lessons:

• Egocentrism: Raglan was insufficiently clear in setting down what he wanted done. Things made sense to him from his vantage point, but not to the units in the valley below, who could see far less of what was going on. The war correspondent William Russell put it this way: "I am persuaded," he wrote, "that [the disaster] was due first to the distance of Lord Raglan from the field, and secondly, to his failure to understand ..... that he saw more than his generals below could see" (cited in Knightley, 1982:11).
• Lack of Professionalism: This was still the era when the British army was officered by royalty and nobility first, and by intelligence and aptitude second. Woodward (1962) describes Lucan as "unpopular with his troops, and ready to criticise orders from headquarters" (p280), and the hard-drinking Cardigan as "one of the most hated officers in the army [] narrow, selfish, and pedantic" (p281). Much of the blame must lie in the breakdown and corruption of effective communication which interpersonal animosity brings with it, and the remainder with the fact that Raglan was surrounded by "perhaps the worst collection of subordinate officers ever concentrated in one army" (Knightley, 1982:7).

Knightley, P. (1982). The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam - The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker (2nd Edition). London: Quartet.

Little Big Horn, 1876: In this encounter on 25th June 1876, General George A. Custer and five companies of the US 7th Cavalry Regiment were surrounded by a superior force of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians and massacred to a man in what has gone on to be referred to as "Custer's Last Stand". The massacre came as part of the 1876 Indian War, a bid to subdue Indian resistance in the high plains south of the Yellowstone River.

The campaign as a whole was under the strategic command of General Philip H. Sheridan in Chicago, and the June 1876 expedition under the local command of General Alfred H. Terry. The Indians were under the strategic command of the Sitting Bull, but usually fought under the field command of Crazy Horse. A three-pronged advance had been envisaged, with columns converging into the Big Horn Plains from the north west, the north east, and the south east. Unfortunately, the southern column under General George Crook had already been given a bloody nose at the Battle of the Rosebud on 17th June. They were engaged by a large force of Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse, and fell back to await reinforcements. Crazy Horse returned to Sitting Bull's encampment somewhere in the Little Big Horn valley, and it was this encampment which was now sought. It was therefore decided to send the remaining two forces separately up the Rosebud and the Big Horn, timing their advances so that they would arrive in the Little Big Horn valley on the same day but from different directions, thus trapping the Indians between them (a double encirclement manoeuvre often known as "hammer and anvil").

At noon on 22nd June, Custer's column, consisting of 12 companies of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, separated from General Terry's column at the point where the Rosebud joins the Yellowstone, and headed south. Terry's column, consisting of five companies of the 7th Infantry Regiment and four companies of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, supported by three Gatling guns, was ferried 50 miles further upstream to the confluence with the Big Horn. From there it, too, headed south, making for the junction with the Little Big Horn.

The advance began at 1212hr, and was within easy sight of the encampment by around 1500hr. Reno then drew his battalion up into battle order, and advanced on the village. The Indians, however, stood their ground, and soon outnumbered Reno. His men dismounted, becoming defenders rather than attackers, and fell back across the Little Big Horn to dig in on a bluff - now Reno Hill - overlooking the valley. Here they held out until relieved by Gibbon's infantry on 27th. This defensive response cost Reno his good name until exonerated posthumously by a Review Board in 1967.

Custer meanwhile had been advancing along the high ground to the north, and when he saw Reno falling back in disorder he sent a rider to hasten Benteen's battalion. Benteen arrived around 40 minutes later, at around 1600hr, and skirmished for a while with the Indians who had been harrassing Reno's retreat. But numbers were not in their favour, and by 1800hr they were forced to dig in alongside Reno and await rescue.

Having supported Reno as best he could, Custer pressed on along the ridge, but encountered fiercer Indian resistance all the time as the enemy organised their forces and switched braves up from the Reno engagement. By 1720hr, the remnants of his five companies had been pushed back onto a line of low knolls now known as Custer Hill, Battle Ridge, and Calhoun Hill, and by 1800hr all 210 of his command had been killed.

Here are some of the criticisms which have been levelled at this unsuccessful foray:

• Failure to Concentrate Resources: The main force was twice divided, once into the three columns of advance (Terry's, Crook's, and Custer's), and then again into three battalions for the final attack (Reno's, Benteen's, and Custer's). For their part, the Sioux deployed their main force twice, once against Crook's column, driving it off, and then again against Custer's. The timing was also twice wrong. At campaign level, Custer arrived two days before Terry at the decisive point, and at battalion level, Benteen's initial sweep to the south brought his 120 men to the battlefield too late to be of influence.
• Disobeying Orders: Although Custer did not actually disobey campaign orders because they had given him ample scope to advance at his discretion, he knew full well that a double encirclement was planned, and that Terry's was very slow-moving column. He had even been explicitly advised to kill a day or two on the upper Rosebud en route. Instead, he forced marched his column so that it arrived all of two days ahead of Terry's.
• Functional Fixedness: On at least one previous occasion - the Battle of the Washita, November 1867 - Custer had attacked an encampment precipitately, following a forced march, and had got away with it. On that occasion, however, there had only been 150 warriors at most to defend it. In fact, he broke one of Sun Tzu's rules of war (number VI-28, to be precise), namely that you should never try the same high-risk manoeuvre twice!
• Arrogance: Custer underestimated his enemy. The combined Sioux and Cheyenne encampment mustered perhaps 3500 fighting men, many with rifles. Custer's three battalions totalled 516 men.
• Management Information: Only at around 1520hr, as he looked down at Reno's engagement from the bluff to the north did Custer first see the size of the enemy force.
• Logistics: The US Congress had previously refused requests for funds to establish permanent military posts on the upper reaches of the Yellowstone River, thus extending the lines of supply when operating in those areas by some 400 miles (New York Times, 6th July 1876). One twelfth of Custer's command therefore spent the entire battle guarding the wagons!

Isandhlwana Hill, 1879: The British invasion of Zululand began on 11th January 1879, with the strategic aim of clearing Zulu strongholds west of the Buffalo River. The invasion force was prepared in Natal, and consisted of three separate columns of advance, the centre column of which was under the command of Lord Chelmsford. This column consisted of 5 companies of the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot (hereafter 1/24th), 7 companies of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot (hereafter 2/24th), 6 companies of the Natal Native Contingent (hereafter NNC), some Natal Pioneers, some mounted irregulars, and a 6-gun battery of Royal Artillery.

The first challenge was to cross the river and climb up onto the Nqutu plateau beyond. The crossing of the river began at a mission station called Rorke's Drift at 0430hr on 11th January, mounted troops first. It took all day to get the column across, but they had to camp straight away while the pioneers improved the primitive roadway on the far side in readiness for the wagons. This proved to be a lengthy process, and even by noon on 20th January the wagons had only advanced some 15 miles, to Isandhlwana Hill, a promontory jutting out from the line of the Nqutu escarpment, and overlooking the valley below. Here, on a natural shelf, still several hundred feet below the plateau, they formed a forward supply camp. They omitted, however, to construct any defence works, contrary to standing orders and despite several experienced officers of the 24th expressing concern.

Chelmsford, meanwhile, had been patrolling ahead, trying to locate the main body of Zulus, and when one of these patrols reported having engaged a large concentration of Zulus he presumed that he had succeeded. At 0330hr on Wednesday 22nd January he went to this patrol's assistance, taking with him all bar one company of the 2/24th, some of the mounted irregulars, 4 of the 6 guns, and the Natal Pioneers. He left the base camp under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pulleine (1/24th), an officer with 24 year's service but lacking significant combat experience. Without the patrols or Chelmsford, Pulleine had at his disposal the 5 companies of the 1/24th, "G" Company (and the cooks and quartermasters) of the 2/24th, some of the mounted irregulars, the NNC, and the remaining two guns. At around 1100hr they were reinforced by a rocket battery and 550 more native troops, of whom 250 were the mounted Natal Native Horse (NNH). These latter were commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Durnford, and were stationed on the right (eastern end) of Pulleine's defensive arc. Above and in front of them, on the edge of the plateau but free to fall back if pressed, was an inner screen of infantry outposts (provided by "G" Company, 2/24th) and an outer screen of mounted irregulars.

But the Zulus Chelmsford had gone off to engage were not the main Zulu army. That - around 20,000 men - had spent the night of the 21st hidden in a ravine some 6 miles distant. It had not been their intention to fight on the 22nd because it was the full moon, and that was deemed unlucky; but around mid-morning a British scout chanced upon them Wishing to retain the element of surprise, the Zulus immediately formed up into their regiments, advanced at the run, and were on the ridge above the British base camp at around midday.

There followed an hour or so of active engagement, with the British more or less holding their own despite the lack of fortifications. Then ammunition began to run low, and because the companies were still well forward it took valuable time restocking them. As a result, the intensity of the musketry slackened and the Zulus began to make progress. Their breakthrough cam a few minutes later when the NNC companies at the centre of the defensive arc broke and ran. This allowed the Zulus to flood through the gap and fan out behind the remaining British, who were then quickly surrounded and massacred almost to the man. Only 55 Europeans survived the day. Here are some of the criticisms which have been levelled at this unsuccessful foray:

Slapton Sands, 1944: In April 1944, in the run up to the Normandy Invasions, many training exercises were staged along the south coast of England. One of the largest of these was called Operation Tiger, and involved the main units destined to land on Utah Beach, Normandy, in the real invasion. Start Bay, south of Dartmouth, Devon, was chosen because its beaches were very similar to Utah Beach. In all, 25000 men and 2750 vehicles were involved. Two incidents of interest then took place, one during the mock assault landings on the 27th and another in the lead up to the mock second wave landings on the 28th.

The first incident is rumoured (but not officially acknowledged) to have occurred as US mock defenders took on assault forces from the US 4th Infantry Division and 1st Engineers Special Brigade. Because this was an attempt to provide lifelike combat experience, these troops had been expressly authorised by General Eisenhower to use live ammunition. The optional rumours are then (a) that the US defenders had not realised they had been issued with live ammunition, and instead of firing over the heads of the attackers were aiming directly at them, and/or (b) that Royal Navy units out at sea giving "lifelike" covering fire were in fact firing short, killing mock defenders and mock attackers alike. Alternatively, there was just general battlefield confusion in which it is the nature of things that people get hurt.

Rumours aside, worse was to happen that night as the mock second wave set off to practice a reinforcing landing. In this officially acknowledged incident in the early hours of 28th April 1944, a convoy of eight fully loaded and very slow LSTs ("landing ships, tank", rather like small reverse-in-roll-off car ferries; also known - not entirely affectionately - as large slow targets), escorted by a single Royal Navy corvette, was ambushed by a squadron of nine German E-Boats (light and fast patrol boats). This second wave contained engineers and quartermaster unit troops. These were not scheduled to perform a beach assault as such, but to practise beach clearing and the offloading of stores and transport vehicles. In the ensuing night action, three of the LSTs were torpedoed, two sinking quickly and one making it home. Most reports state that 198 US sailors and 551 US soldiers were killed. The incident was not officially acknowledged until June 1954.

Numerous contributory errors have been identified, including:

• Training Errors: There was an often fatal lack of clarity on how to fasten the self-inflating buoyancy jackets. These were designed to be fitted under the arms, but many men had it fitted around their waist. When it inflated in this lower position it was below their centre of gravity and floated them upside down!
• Quality and Speed of Decision Making: There was a decision to proceed with an under-escorted convoy. It had originally been intended for the Royal Navy to provide two escort vessels, but one of them, the destroyer HMS Scimitar, was damaged at the last moment and stayed behind for repairs. Nevertheless, there were other vessels in the vicinity which could have taken her place, but the Royal Navy were too short of staff at 2300hr to arrange the replacement (Regan, 2001). In hindsight, the decision to proceed with the single escort was unsafe .....
• Defence in Depth: ..... as indeed was the decision not to have had a larger escort in the first place. There had, for example, been seven destroyers giving support fire during the landings on the 27th (Murch, Murch, and Fairweather, 1984).
• Situational Awareness (1) - Lack of Diagnostic Data: The US ships could not communicate by radio with either the Royal Navy ships or with their control room ashore. This followed a typing error setting down the radio frequencies to be used. The sole remaining RN escort, the corvette HMS Azalea, received prior warning of the approach of the E-Boats but assumed - wrongly - that the LSTs had received it as well (Small, 1988).
• Situational Awareness (2) - Lack of Progress Data: The commander of the one of the surviving LSTs complained that lack of information led him to believe that the flames and gunfire were part of the exercise and not enemy action (Small, 1988).

Murch , M., Murch, D., & Fairweather, L. (1984). The American Forces at Salcombe and Slapton during World War Two. Plymouth, PDS.

NB: Timings are given in Bahrain time, using the format BCnnnn if from Barry and Charles (1992) or EVnnnn if from Evans (1993). Rochlin uses Bandar Abbas time, and needs to be adjusted downwards by 90 minutes to give the equivalent Bahrain time. Cushman uses Omani time and needs to be adjusted downwards by 60 minutes.

• Previous Year: A single Iraqi Mirage bomber surprise-attacked USS Stark with Exocet missiles. The aircraft had been tracked from 70 miles out, but no positive defensive action was taken until too late. The ship was struck by two missiles (one dud), causing serious damage and killing 37 crewmen. Not unreasonably, this made commanders much more sensitive to the risks of complacency and inaction. [We return to this point under the heading Availability Heuristic at the end of the section.]
• Precious Year: In response to Iranian attacks on neutral tankers using the Kuwaiti oil terminal halfway along the Persian Gulf, the US promoted Operation Earnest Will, the escorting of tankers in and out of the Persian Gulf to protect them from further attack. Bahrain was chosen as headquarters. Less officially, the operation included the sustained use of covert operations by US Navy SEALS (special forces) against the Iranian minelaying units.
• February 1988: Rear Admiral Dennis Brooks was removed from his post as commander of the Joint Task Force in the Gulf following protests at what he saw as too much interference from American military intelligence trying to promote said covert war. [The US was, of course, officially neutral in the Iran-Iraq War, and its sympathies (in that decade, at least) lay with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.] Brooks was replaced by Rear Admiral Anthony Less.
• 14th April 1988: The USS Samuel B. Roberts was damaged by an Iranian mine.
• 18th April 1988: The US carried out Operation Praying Mantis, a reprisal operation, against the minelaying vessels and their bases. This led to a period of confrontation in and around the Straights of Hormuz (at the mouth of the Persian Gulf), in which a fleet of small Iranian armed speedboats - referred to generically as "boghammers" - played a prominent role.
• 29th May: USS Vincennes - a 9600-ton Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser - arrived for a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf. She was commanded by Captain Will Rogers, and equipped with a state-of-the-art weapons control system known as AEGIS.

RESEARCH ISSUE: The captain, his key officers, and the equipment operators, are constantly linked by headphones so it is not always easy to identify who is currently speaking. Indeed, the entire arrangement - many separate minds, all interlinked - raises some interesting psychological issues. One such issue is the relationship between the two cerebral hemispheres at such a moment. Normally, our auditory world (largely left hemisphere) and our visual world (largely right hemisphere) are comparatively easy to integrate one with the other, because normally what we hear are the sounds of the world we are looking at, not the sounds of the world someone else is looking at. This allows us to maintain a single coherent mental model of the world. Little is known, however, about how the cognitive system might apportion its resources when faced with the clamour of a command and control system such as that described. Indeed, in direct comparison to AEGIS, the human command and control system - ie. the brain - fails abysmally, having evolved to be able to track and destroy in prioritised sequence perhaps three simultaneously approaching targets, in most weathers, preferably on the flat, and out to a range of 300 feet! Our own analysis of the psychological processes involved in military signalling is set out in Smith (1997).

• time contentious: Permission to engage was received from Bahrain.
• time contentious: [CU0952hr.] Vincennes locked her targeting radar onto Flight 655, and Rogers decided to shoot it down when it got to 20 miles range.
• time contentious: [BC0954hr; CU0953hr.] Vincennes' TIC called again that Flight 655 was accelerating (true) and descending (untrue).
• time contentious: [CU0954hr.] Two Standard-2 ship-to-air missiles were launched, resulting in the total loss of Flight 655. The FDR was never recovered.

This incident provoked international outrage and a personal apology by President Reagan, brought about the payment of $131.8 million reparations, and has become a major case study for students of human decision making, in particular as an instance of a phenomenon known as cognitive framing. This is what happens when preconceptions are allowed to distort subsequent perceptions. The official enquiry - the Fogarty Report (Fogarty, 1988) - remains classified.

Numerous contributory errors have been identified, including:

Barry, J. & Charles, R. (1992). Sea of lies. Newsweek, 13th July 1992.

Bennett, S. (2000). Tools of Deconstruction. Leicester: University of Leicester.

Cushman, J.H. (1988). 11 minutes to downing of an airliner. New York Times, 20th August 1988.

Fogarty, W.M. (1988). USN Report 28th July 1988.

USS Greeneville Submarine Disaster, 2001: In this incident on 10th February 2001, the US submarine USS Greeneville was practising surfacing in an emergency. This is something of a "show off" manoeuvre, in which 6000 tons of submarine leaps out of the sea at 30mph much like a dolphin. Unfortunately, the presence of a Japanese fisheries training ship had not been detected, and she was fatally holed as the submarine surfaced beneath her. Three crew, two teachers, and four students died.

In the subsequent Navy Court of Enquiry, Rear Admiral Konetzni was very clear where the responsibility lay: "The commanding officer," he said, "has the absolute obligation to make sure the area is free". The Greeneville's fire control technician had had signals that a ship was close, but had presumed that they were spurious when a periscope scan had seen nothing. He had been prevented from raising the matter explicitly due to the presence of 16 civilian guests in the control room. [When civilians are included on a training mission, it becomes known as a "tiger cruise".] He had also allowed to lapse into disuse the standing order requiring a manual plot be maintained of surface ships in the area of operation. There has been conflicting testimony as to whether one of these civilians was actually at the helm at the time of the collision. (Associated Press, 12th-19th March 2001.)

Hainan Island Mid-Air Collision, 2001: In this incident on 1st April 2001, a US Navy EP-3E spy plane, on patrol along the fringes of Chinese airspace off Hainan Island, collided with a Chinese jet fighter sent up to monitor it. The fighter crashed, killing its pilot, and the EP-3E was forced to execute an emergency landing at a Chinese military airfield. Both countries are holding the others to blame for the aerial jostling which brought about the collision, but appear to agree that the incident took place in international airspace. The aircrew were released after sustained diplomacy on 12th April 2001.

There is also an emerging story of what might be an prolonged confrontation. Former US Defence Secretary William Cohen reported since the incident that the US had complained to the Chinese in January 2001 at the unnecessarily aggressive tactics of its fighters. This earlier complaint was lodged after Chinese aircraft came "within a matter of feet" of a surveillance aircraft, and another source reports that the pilot who died was "known for his aggressive tactics" (CNN, 5th April 2001). Details of these daily confrontations are, of course, classified. The US will not be giving up its surveillance flights (Reuters, 12th April 2001).