The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder for June 22, 2018

It’s much simpler to just designate an area to be a free fire zone. In WW2, for example, the Allied air forces considered hostile airspace to be a free-fire zone and would shoot anything that moved. After 1943 the 8th Army Air Force adopted two styles of bomber escort: ‘close escort’, where the fighters stayed close to the bombers, and ‘distant escort’ where the fighters roamed free. Distant escort meant that 8th Fighter Command aircraft could be hundreds of miles away from the bombers they were supposed to be escorting, often parked over Luftwaffe fighter airfields, the better to jump German fighters taking off or landing. After 1944, 9th Tactical Air Force aircraft would roam at will looking for targets; a 9th Tac fighter sweep caught Erwin Rommel’s car, shot it up, and Rommel died of wounds later. (he’d probably not have survived much further anyway, he was involved with the Black Chapel conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.) 9the Tac aircraft smashed German armored formations in France, most famously hammering 12 SS Panzerdivision Hitler Jugend, and in particular killing Michael Wittmann, the greatest panzer ace ever, when a rocket-firing Typhoon brewed his Tiger. Wittmann and two other SS Tigers had just days before destroyed an entire brigade of British tanks, and would have got more but they ran out of ammunition and went home. 9th Tac also destroyed a lot of civilian vehicles which happened to be on the road at the wrong time, and made a sport of hunting trains.

In Vietnam, free-fire zones meant that if it moved and didn’t identify itself, it stopped a salvo from the nearest firebase, or some bombs from aircraft, or direct fire from the nearest infantry. This policy is still in effect in Afghanistan.