During WW2, the Japanese were shooting airmen who have ejected. This was a MAJOR no no in wartime. So the only reason a Japanese plane would have been in striking distance from an ejected airman, would be because the Japanese airman was trying to kill him.
Another fun fact. During war, snipers don’t ever shoot a person who is taking a shit.
For the pooping in thing, after doing a bunch of research, the “rule” was mostly memoirs and interviews about what the West did. This could be an attempt to rewrite history to make the West look better. But here are a couple of sources I found.
Yay, a warcrime. Let’s celebrate it since it is our guys that did it!
A parachuting pilot is protected under the geneva convention. Them shooting means it’s like a guy who threw up a white flag, then started shooting the negotiator that approached with their own white flag.
Dude was parachuting and shot a pilot too close to him because the Japanese pilot shot down his bomber and attempted the war crime of attacking a pilot under chute.
The Japanese Zero that hit Baggett circled back around for a closer look, intent on finishing him off if he wasn’t already dead. Thinking quickly, Baggett pulled his pistol from its holster, played dead, and hung limp in his parachute harness as the plane came toward him.
As the Zero pilot neared Owen’s body, he opened the canopy over the cockpit to get a close look. At that moment, Baggett came to life, raised his 1911 semi-automatic pistol, and fired four rounds into the cockpit. One or more of Owen’s rounds hit home, as the Zero spun out and ended its assault against him.
Ya, sure buddy. “Intent on finishing him off”, pilot “opening the canopy to get a better look”, it all sounds like bullshit.
If the other pilot wanted to shoot the parachuting guy, why not just do it, instead of going through this weird dance of “I’ll check if he’s dead”? How do they know he was “intent on finishing him off”? Even if this weird “checking if alive” thing happened, maybe he wanted to radio back that a combatant on a parachute fell to the ground, so the military police can expect one?
Man if you think that’s the most unbelievable thing a Japanese soldier did between 1937 to 1945 you’re really not going to like hearing about Nanking and Unit 731.
It wasn’t uncommon to open your canopy to get a better view, I don’t know what to tell you besides watch some old dogfight interviews.
The Soviets were practically infamous for always flying with them open. Not unreasonable to think a pilot that considered combat over might open his canopy.
And, also, sucks to suck. War crime protections are agreements between nations on standards of behavior, and Imperial Japan violated them all, so even if it was:
The outlandish part isn’t “guy got shot”. The outlandish part is “the guy who shot him bragged about shooting him then made an entire story up why it was cool to shoot him. Now people celebrate the shooter despite it being a literal warcrime”.
Such parachutists are considered hors de combat and it is made a war crime to attack them in an interstate armed conflict under Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
Protocol I was added in 1977. World War II ended in 1945.
While some of the Geneva Conventions – not the relevant ones – predated World War II, Japan was not a party to even those until after World War II.
Odds are if a fighter is close enough for a pistol then the fighters were committing war crimes by shooting parachuting aviators. The Japanese were known for shooting down parachutes.
What I’ve learned about “war crimes” is that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t lose. And if you win you get to punish the loser for their war crimes and pretend like you didn’t commit any.
They’re moving pretty quickly relative to you. By the time they realize you’ve shot at them, they’ll be hundreds of meters away. If they then decide to turn around (since they have to be facing you to shoot you) and come for another run at you…honestly they were probably going to do it anyway.
For ever crazy stunt pulled off in one of those games, even crazier shit has happened in real life. Humans under extreme stress in life threatening situations tend to get really creative.
Well, the F16 is called Prius and shooting down the F16 with an RPG is called grabbing McD from the drive through window. But you know, I was really far from the window and had to open the door to step out with one foot.
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