Lance Corporal Matty Hull.
Photograph: Bruce Adams/Daily Mail/PA
It is the silence that is most telling. After 11 minutes of near-constant chat, the two US pilots learn that the convoy they have just attacked was most likely a line of British light tanks.
One of the A-10 pilots asks a controller on the ground for news on the convoy's crew. Eventually he gets a reply: "We are getting an initial brief that there was one killed and one wounded, over."
The tape goes quiet. The silence lasts only seven seconds, but feels like an age. "Copy," says the pilot. Another nine seconds pass. "I'm going to be sick," he says.
Thus, according to a cockpit videotape of the incident in southern Iraq in March 2003, did the pilots learn they had killed a British soldier, Lance Corporal Matty Hull.
The tape - which L/Cpl Hull's family have been fighting to have released publicly - was leaked to The Sun, which has placed a full transcript and the video on its website.
US authorities have been extremely reluctant to allow the tape to be played at the ongoing inquest into L/Cpl Hull's death, and in some ways you can understand why.
The pilots clearly see orange panels on top of the vehicles, an indicator of coalition troops, but attack when ground controllers say there are no friendly forces nearby.
But at the same time, the video gives little sign that the unnamed pilots, believed to be reservists with no previous combat experience, are the gung-ho would-be Top Guns of popular myth.
There is some unpleasant triumphalism after the attack. "It looks like he is hauling ass," laughs the pilot who fired on the convoy as he watches a soldier pulling a wounded comrade free.
But the shock when the pilots realise who they have hit seems deep and genuine. Both curse repeatedly, while one appears to weep.
Most of all, the tape shows that the start of the Iraq invasion was marked by confusion and occasional incompetence. But this was already well known. So why try to keep it hidden?
