Go Back  PPRuNe Forums > Aircrew Forums > Military Aviation
Reload this Page >

Airmen under canopy shoots down Zero.

Military Aviation A forum for the professionals who fly military hardware. Also for the backroom boys and girls who support the flying and maintain the equipment, and without whom nothing would ever leave the ground. All armies, navies and air forces of the world equally welcome here.

Airmen under canopy shoots down Zero.

Old 13th Feb 2016, 19:24
  #1 (permalink)  
Thread Starter
 
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: surfing, watching for sharks
Posts: 4,067
Received 43 Likes on 28 Posts
Airmen under canopy shoots down Zero.

Bailed Out And Shot At, This WWII Pilot Made A Historic Kill - World War Wings
West Coast is offline  
Old 15th Feb 2016, 05:53
  #2 (permalink)  
Danny42C
Guest
 
Posts: n/a


West Coast,

A remarkable story ! What a lucky shot ! Well worth a decoration, I would have thought. Did he get one ? Were there any witnesses ? - or was it just his say-so ? (Reminds me of Wg.Cdr. Nicolson's VC [Google James Brindley Nicolson VC] in the Battle of Britain - in both cases the stories were believable, but without back-up are/were open to doubt).

And how and by whom was the photograph supposed to have been taken ? If that is the graticule of a Zero gunsight, then a mid-air is a split second away !

Now the side-story:

"Reloading an A-10 takes Way More Than You Think" is well worth a look.

What a formidable beast ! Danny42C.
 
Old 15th Feb 2016, 06:07
  #3 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: eastcoastoz
Age: 76
Posts: 1,699
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
The whole thing has 'FAKE' written all over it.
Westy, I'd given you a bit more credit than that.
Are those the kind of comics you normally read?
Stanwell is offline  
Old 15th Feb 2016, 06:19
  #4 (permalink)  

Evertonian
 
Join Date: May 2000
Location: #3117# Ppruner of the Year Nominee 2005
Posts: 12,437
Received 89 Likes on 50 Posts
Pic is an obvious composite shot for the article, but I'm still struggling with the Zero going into a near stall to open the canopy & have a look!
Buster Hyman is offline  
Old 15th Feb 2016, 06:25
  #5 (permalink)  
Thread Starter
 
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: surfing, watching for sharks
Posts: 4,067
Received 43 Likes on 28 Posts
I don't believe anywhere it's claimed the picture is genuine, rather a part of the article.

You're both welcome to research further if you'd like. Pilots have lost control and cratered aircraft for a lot less than being distracted by someone shooting at them, so its not beyond the pale.
West Coast is offline  
Old 16th Feb 2016, 01:09
  #6 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Sale, Australia
Age: 80
Posts: 3,832
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
The feat is documented in quite a number of places, even in the pilots obit. Of course the photo is a darkroom artifice.
Brian Abraham is offline  
Old 17th Feb 2016, 09:22
  #7 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: uk
Posts: 579
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
I think anyone who has ever used a pistol will view this tale with a sad shake of the head. Sad because it would be nice if it were true, shake because it almost certainly isn't.
Most people could not reliably hit a football with a pistol above 15 yards yet we are asked to believe that he hit a similar sized object that was travelling past at 70mph, almost certainly much much further away than 15yards whilst swinging beneath a parachute? That really is stretching credibility too far. The odds of a lucky shot must be many millions to one. Who verified the story? Were there witnesses?
Looks to me like a nice morale-boosting feelgood medal award that the press would have a field day with and make everyone smile, and no harm in that, but as to the accuracy of it...
Wageslave is offline  
Old 17th Feb 2016, 10:18
  #8 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Somewhere flat
Age: 68
Posts: 5,536
Likes: 0
Received 40 Likes on 27 Posts
Well it was either him who shot it down or the three P-38s on the Zero's tail.
Wensleydale is offline  
Old 17th Feb 2016, 11:27
  #9 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: May 1999
Location: Quite near 'An aerodrome somewhere in England'
Posts: 26,783
Received 257 Likes on 103 Posts
Shooting at aircrew who've had to bail out is a war crime, as well as being despicable.

One wartime Luftwaffe commander told his pilots "If any of you shoot at an enemy pilot in his parachute, I will personally shoot you myself.....and I won't miss!"

If the pilot in the OP's link managed to hit the Zero pilot, then it was an impressive feat of marksmanship (or a lucky one), to be sure. But just because the average pilot's skill with a handgun is less than his being able to hit a cow's arse with a banjo, there's no reason to discredit the story.
BEagle is online now  
Old 17th Feb 2016, 12:03
  #10 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Uranus
Posts: 958
Received 11 Likes on 9 Posts
Quite so BEagle, it is against Article 42 of the Geneva Convention to shoot an airman in a parachute unless the parachutist raises his weapon and then he/she is considered a combatant again. Also, for Airborne troops in parachutes then Article 42 does not apply - so meat bombs are valid targets...

The B Word
The B Word is offline  
Old 17th Feb 2016, 18:50
  #11 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: New Braunfels, TX
Age: 70
Posts: 1,954
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Shooting at aircrew who've had to bail out is a war crime............
Quite so BEagle, it is against Article 42 of the Geneva Convention to shoot an airman in a parachute..........
1. Who's going to inform the folks in Syria who killed the aircrew of the Sukhoi downed over Turkey?
2. Was Imperial Japan a signatory of the Geneva Conventions of 1864, 1906, and/or 1929?
3. Did Article 42 even exist prior to the 1949 Conventions?

FWIW, it was not uncommon for aircrew to be shot at in their parachutes during WW2. All sides did it. It was not yet a crime then.
KenV is offline  
Old 17th Feb 2016, 20:09
  #12 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Glasgow
Posts: 198
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
This is what Dowding and Churchill apparently said on the subject:

"After dinner, they discussed the topic about the morality of shooting parachuting Luftwaffe pilots. Dowding suggested that German pilots were perfectly entitled to shoot RAF pilots parachuting over Britain as they were still potential combatants (i.e., going back to a new aircraft to conduct another military mission), while RAF pilots should refrain from firing at German pilots as they were out of combat and would eventually become prisoners of war once they landed on British soil."


Full text of the above quoted Wiki article here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_parachutists
seafire6b is offline  
Old 17th Feb 2016, 23:58
  #13 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: N/A
Posts: 5,881
Received 362 Likes on 192 Posts
But just because the average pilot's skill with a handgun is less than his being able to hit a cow's arse with a banjo, there's no reason to discredit the story.
Too true BEagle. Lucky, rather than expert marksmanship. Personal experience in Vietnam saw a number of aircrew taken out by equally "lucky" shots, in circumstances where a sniper wouldn't have a chance, without any other damage to the aircraft
megan is offline  
Old 18th Feb 2016, 00:36
  #14 (permalink)  
Danny42C
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Tweedledum or Tweedledee ?

seafire6b,

I reckon Trenchard had the right of it. The object of the exercise must be to render the pilot a non-combatant because (from my Post p.116 #2317 on "Gaining a RAF Pilot's brevet in WWII"):
...in order to expand an air force quickly, aircraft production is a secondary matter. Once you have got the assembly lines going, you can turn out aircraft like family cars. But no air force then or since has been able to train a man from scratch to operational pilot in less than a year. That is your bottleneck...
Time is the currency of war....

Another good reason for not shooting at a parachutist - you may need all the ammo you've got for yourself in the next ten seconds (for dealing with the Zero [or whatever] that's just appeared from nowhere and is having a go at you !)
In many cases an aircraft described as the "Mitsuibishi A6M Zero" (well known) is actually an "Oscar" (much less well known) Nakajima Ki-43 (the bane of our lives in Burma). ''
...the Ki-43 shot down more Allied aircraft than any other Japanese fighter and almost all the JAAF's aces achieved most of their kills in it...
[Wiki]. (Not unlike the Spitfire/Hurricane story in the BoB).

Not easy to tell apart in a scrimmage:

Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero Model 22 (NX712Z)
Nakajima Ki-43-IIa

and with much the same performance.

Danny42C.
 
Old 18th Feb 2016, 13:24
  #15 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: New Braunfels, TX
Age: 70
Posts: 1,954
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
This is what Dowding and Churchill apparently said on the subject:

"After dinner, they discussed the topic about the morality of shooting parachuting Luftwaffe pilots. Dowding suggested that German pilots were perfectly entitled to shoot RAF pilots parachuting over Britain as they were still potential combatants (i.e., going back to a new aircraft to conduct another military mission), while RAF pilots should refrain from firing at German pilots as they were out of combat and would eventually become prisoners of war once they landed on British soil."
But not if they bailed out over Ireland.
LINK

And I hafta wonder if "potential combatant" is really a good yardstick to use. On the ground and using the standards of the time, any able bodied male between 16 and 60 was a "potential combatant." I assume it would not be considered moral to shoot all of them during a war.
KenV is offline  
Old 18th Feb 2016, 21:19
  #16 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Washington.
Age: 73
Posts: 1,070
Received 151 Likes on 53 Posts
As far as I know, there is no such thing as "potential" combatant, you are a combatant or not. The combat pilot, while in the airplane or under the canopy, is a combatant. Though my personal feeling is that the one under the canopy, being generally defenseless, should be (morally) treated as a noncombatant, but I can understand why that's open for debate.

The pilot under the canopy being attacked by a fighter is fully justified to act in self defense.

A combatant once captured, under the Geneva convention, becomes a prisoner of war (non-combatant) and must be careful not to act as a combatant or be subject to no coverage under the Geneva convention.

By the way, the POW that escapes is no longer a POW and not even a "combatant", but IIRC the equivalent of a spy - and until repatriated, subject to being killed on sight by the enemy. It's been a long time since I sat through all these lectures.
GlobalNav is online now  
Old 18th Feb 2016, 23:21
  #17 (permalink)  
Danny42C
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Tweedledum and Tweedledee

KenV (your #15),

The "potential combatants" we are talking about here are not "any able bodied male" but highly and expensively trained fighter pilots, the potential lack of whom was the main worry on both sides in 1940. A German pilot parachuting down over Britain and Northern Ireland is clearly a non-combatant as a POW (and over Eire should have been interned "for the duration" - were there many such cases ?) and so the same should apply to him. But a German pilot floating down over France (say) can (and will) fight another day: he is clearly still a combatant - that was Trenchard's point, and I agree with him.

I said that the long training time for a pilot was our "bottleneck", and this is supported by an extract from:
...Battle of Britain - Page 102

https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1844156575

The fighter production figures for the summer of 1940 tell their own story and are one reason why it was possible for Dowding to win the the Battle of Britain. When Beaverbrook became Minister of Aircraft Production on 14th May, the planned production of fighters for that month was 262 machines. The actual output for the momth was 325. For June, the planned programme was 292; the actal output wwas 446. In July and August the improvement still continued: total planned production 611, total output 972. Already by early July the supply of fighters had become so satisfactory that it was decided to allocate an additional four aircraft to each of the thirty Hurricane and six Spitfire squadrons- though, unfortunately, there were not the pilots to go with them...
(underlining mine).

Thanks for the link,

Danny42C.
 
Old 19th Feb 2016, 15:05
  #18 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: New Braunfels, TX
Age: 70
Posts: 1,954
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
The "potential combatants" we are talking about here are not "any able bodied male" but highly and expensively trained fighter pilots, the potential lack of whom was the main worry on both sides in 1940.
TOTALLY agree. That is why I said that yardstick would not be useful in a ground combat environment. A very different yardstick would need to be used. I was just making the point that when making moral judgments in war, the chosen terminology is important so as to make the morality universal rather than highly specific.

And this relates directly back to Beagle's comment that it is both immoral and illegal to shoot at aircrew in their parachutes. First, it was NOT a crime in the period of WW2, and second, the morality is ambiguous as it depends on multiple factors. It is not at all as obvious or as clear cut as it was made to seem.
KenV is offline  

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Thread Tools
Search this Thread

Contact Us - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Terms of Service

Copyright © 2024 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Use of this site indicates your consent to the Terms of Use.