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Pilot Accused of Involuntary Manslaughter in Deaths of 4 Canadians
Tuesday, October 1, 2002
By Tim O'Neil
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Schmidt graduated from the Naval Academy in 1987. He learned to fly the F/A-18 Hornet, which is built in St. Louis, and flew nearly 100 combat missions. His mother said those included patrols over the northern no-fly zone in Iraq and missions from an aircraft carrier during the Kosovo conflict in 1999, when he encountered anti-aircraft fire. Along the way, he logged an unusually high 3,200 hours of flying. He went to the Navy's Fighter Weapons School -- Top Gun -- in Nevada, and stayed as an instructor. In 1999, he became a Navy liaison to the neighboring Air Force Fighter Weapons School, where he learned to fly the F-16.

ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- KRT
The front of Joan Schmidt's refrigerator in her south St. Louis County home is a proud grandma's clutter of snapshots from vacations, holidays and family-room floors. Mixed among them are pictures of her brave fighter-pilot son, standing tall next to his hot-rod jets.

Below the pictures is a recent addition, a photocopy of a popular inspirational phrase: "Good morning, this is God. I will be handling all of your problems today."

It is there because of the worry that has become the focus of Schmidt's life for the past several months. Her aviator son, Maj. Harry Schmidt, stands accused of involuntary manslaughter for dropping a bomb in Afghanistan five months ago that killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight.

According to military investigative reports, Maj. Schmidt thought an enemy anti-aircraft battery was firing at the F-16 Falcon in front of his own as he flew south of Kandahar about 2 a.m. on April 18. The tracers were groundfire from the Canadians, who were practicing at an old al-Qaida base. He hit them with a 500-pound, laser-guided bomb.

The military alleges he failed to follow procedures by neither flying away from the fire nor verifying the target before moving in.
(More: The Ledger-Enquirer News Source)
2002 © The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Dan