I don't know any soldiers I would boot, but I am very sure there are tons. I know also about military tactics and also that there are third way to eliminate the enemy, kind of supressing it. Don't know the word in English.

But if you are a fighter pilot, do you have those choises? No you don't. You can't only wound the soldier. You can't supress him. You can't capture him. You can only eliminate him by killing him. If he flies over your country, then you can gamble and let him go down to get captured.

Those are the choises. Or of course there is that sandbox choise "we just shoot planes down." It is good in gaming or if you fear yourself of being shot down.

I am glad someone got it exactly. You mentioned all those examples I was thinking will I have to write about. That kind of things has been done, and there is no point in judging from history instead of learning from it.

Exactly. It was very nasty. Now, if we want to learn more, the question is who was the bigger coward, the soldier who shot down chute pilots while totally hating to do it and sacrificed everything he had to stop the war or Knight of the Sky who had "honour" and did not shoot chutes? Just asking. Real WW2, no sandboxes.

Or of course we could keep things in kids level black&white and stop discussing. This is already too much for some I think.

So you say killing is right. I disagree but realise that sometimes it has to be done. I would never say killing is right (as in right and wrong).

Wrong? you don't know what wrong means...? Now you're just arguing about words. Pointless again.

If there are no planes left then the pilot is irrelevant. This is what is known as Air superiority. There will always be people to put into planes.

Would you throw a grenade into a barn full of unarmed POW soilders?

Or execute anyone and everyone who surrendered?

Talk all you like about 'kill everyone who could possibly kill you at somepoint in the future' that argument could also be used to justify bombing children. It's a flawed argument.

I simply think that in the cases where, as you put it, it has to be done, then it is not wrong (it's right).

It's not pointless, I honestly don't understand your point that "Even if killing someone is justified it is still wrong." Go look up a definition of wrong (you'll find several) and give me an example of where a justified killing (as you put it) is wrong. If you don't want to argue about the words, no problem.

Hmm, this was actually pointless from the very beginning besides the fun factor of writing and thinking out of the box. Carry on men, nothing to see here :lol:

WWII went on for 6 years, so no one quickly achieved air superiority, and a shortage of skilled pilots was a serious problem. As Oleg would say (and I'm not suggesting he agrees with any particular view, it's just a quote from him), it's not the plane, it's the pilot. So if Gunther Rall had been shot, the Germans would have had the same success by sticking a new recruit in a plane instead of him - obviously not.

Well now you're being silly. If a German pilot has bailed over France in BoB, he is going to get back in a plane and try to kill your side. That is not the same as a POW, not even close. And children... well that's silly.

I respect that your opinion is different to ours, but you're suggesting we're mad, irrational or just naive about war - yet as quoted a couple of pages ago, Dowding also thought that those bailing over friendly territory were a reasonable target. Or do you think he was a clueless idiot who knew nothing about war?

I give up.

If you can't understand that killing someone is not what should happen (even though it does) that human life is paramount, and should never be taken lightly, or that however you dress it up and for whatever reason it was done the act of killing is fundamentally wrong then I can't put it any simpler.

I would never condem anyone who fought in a war and killed someone, but homicide of any form is wrong. The moment it's right and no-one cares is the moment we're all fucked.

I'm not bothered that you see chute shooting as ok. I was adding balance to the thread and trying to stay away from opinion. I, like you have made my mind up on where I stand on it.

I'm going watching the football..

Yeah, air superiority, and part of that is forcing the enemy to use unskilled badly trained pilots. Quality counts too, as you know for sure.

And I am not talking about killing everyone. I have been specifically talking about eliminating the enemy. The enemy means enemy soldiers. Eliminating includes killing, supressing, capturing, whatever to make them not a threat. Forcing an enemy pilot to bail out is like forcing him to do a tactical retreat. Definetly he is not eliminated if bailed out over his lands. He is shooting at you, your friends, and your countrymen next day like in Battle of Britain.


Edit: And if we take "honour" into this, I would be interested to know what kind of honour standards Japanese had. Also I am interested of Polish pilots. Why they fought so mercilessly. At least there is no way I could say they were dishonourable right away. Maybe they had standards like "no mercy untill it is over".


Edit: If it would not be bad for the population inside the genre and if my current squadron would allow I would start fer sure a "chute shooters club" squadron :lol:


Edit: Will someone agro if I say "i lol when I shoot a chute" :lol: Such a pity I can't go taunt the squadron I am at war with :lol:

What if the POW escaped? or the child grew up to be a fighter pilot? It's still deciding to kill someone based on speculation.

I being deliberatly provocative to make you think about it from a different perspective. Where did I suggest that you were mad, irrational and naive?

I mentioned Churchill overuling RAF commanders earler in the thread so no I don't think Dowding was an idiot, just that I disagree with what he thought. And I don't have a problem disagreing with anyone and I'm not here to 'convert' anyone.

So what if we disagree? What's your problem with that?
you trying to win something here?

Oh man.....quality counts......hm how far do you get with the best fighters and the best pilots in the world with no fuel? That is what put the Luftwaffe pretty well and the Wehrmacht out of action no fuel. Not masses of killed people. But I am certain you will come up with some arguement saying that is so not right. As to your chute shooting squadron, just try it...I know for sure you would be then banned from the WoP servers real fast, and most squadrons that have been around for some time, have a lot of contempt for chute shooters, if you enjoy flying in a squadron no one wants to fly against, have fun, I am certain you will have lots of matches......

I absolutely agree with winny carrying on here is pointless, as a door has more understanding.

Really? Stalingrad counted not? Did they run out of fuel in North Africa too? Interesting :lol: Now tell me, why they run out of fuel?

And by the way, you ran out of arguments faster than Wehrmach ran out of fuel :lol: according to your ad hominem :lol:

About Chute Shooters Club I have said it is just stupid since this game should be fun for all people. Good anyway you told Chute Shooters would be banned, was interesting.

Thats the way to win an argue, simply proclaim yourself a winner and insult everyone disagreeing the best you can. Unique.


Anyone who knows anything from this subject should know that there was no one issue for the Luftwaffe that prevented it from effectively intercepting USAAF heavies and later claiming aerial superiority even over its own soil.

Industrial capacity. By late 43, U.S. built just B-24s at a rate of 1 per hour, 24 a day. All in all, 200-ish combat aircraft every single day, of which about 1/5th to 1/4th were directed to the Pacific. Add to this all Soviet, British, Canadian etc. production. Germany could manufacture a mere fraction of the hardware that could be used against it.

Technology. While the Germans certainly had "better" equipment early on, the Allies, especially Western ones, were quickly gaining on them. Combined to industrial might, it kind of doesnt matter if you happen to fly a 20kmph faster fighter, if the opposing air force has the numbers to park 50 il-2s 5 times a day over your airfield with hundreds of aircraft escorting, and with your 109 blown to pieces, there is nothing you can do about the same 50 il2s bombing and strafing up your already hugely outnumbered troops. Or how the Allies landed in Normandy, and during the whole day, Luftwaffe managed to fly 2 sorties over the beaches. Allies flew 21,000 and continued their bombing campaign over Low countries and Germany.

Leadership. The unbelievable mistakes done by the very high HQ were the ones that that left Luftwaffe in the well known situation in the first place. Inability to use possessed resources to their full extent, waging war on 3 fronts simultaneously, thinking that arranging fancy parades in Berlin starring pale skinned blue eyed and yellow haired aryan "supersoldiers" is more important than winning the war. Actually decreasing the fighter production in the middle of the Battle of Britain... anyone?

In the end of the war, Luftwaffe was outnumbered 20:1 or worse, the enemy had the range for the Luftwaffe to have no place to hide, its aircraft were no longer better than its opponents, its pilots' average skill had gone down because German HQ never bothered to set up a proper pilot training in time, and when it tried it was too late, and had they had the time to fully train their pilots, they would not have had the fuel to do so.

By the way, there are a lot of objectionally written books on this topic. I recommend at least moilami to read a couple of them...

Maybe we should make a poll of it, "what won the war"?

a) P51
b) americans in normandy
c) germans were cowards

:grin:

Rofl I vote P51! :lol: That I call art in making a poll where all selections are equally hilarious. Though if I would have to select one of those for real I might select b.

I have read Turning Point Stalingrad or something like that. Some time ago I checked the local library for WW2 aviation books but there was nothing much worth to read. I however borrowed the book Kadonneen Brewsterin Metsästys,* which was interesting reading, and left me with mixed feelings. Thanks for the author anyway, appreciated. I would gladly offer her a cup of coffee anytime with a chat no matter what other people say. By the way USA people, gief our Brewster back or restore it a new!

Will read more books when I find something.



* English translation by me "The hunt for the lost Brewster" (edit).

The international Banking Mafia won the war and enslaved the ethnic sovereign States of Europe.

Who should we thank for that? eh? :P

Alot of interesting ideas and belives in this post, but war is a something that cant be understood, and cant be regulatet...Each culture have there way of thinking war, they have there own rules of war. These rules are set by culture, not by moral and ethics.

On top of that you throw in the information you give to the soldiers, so you can manipulate them to do what you want.

All armys have there own culture, that is made from there countrys history, and any leader will use this to "direct" there troops in war.

It sounds awsome mentioning moral and ethics when there is talk about war, but moral and ethics are not native to war. We are trying to make war look pretty and that is just imposible, why? well you thow in the human factor and added to the chaos of war you will end up with less and less control (many commanders doing all time have looked the other way when some soldier did something wrong) why to keep control...

Any war is a dynamic creature, there is so many factors involved that its easyer to wright two words "ethic/moral" than sit down and break war up to the layers it realy is...

One thing is for sure

You cant regulate a dynamic situation like war with a static rule set to be used in the war. Way way to many factors involved.

If you fight a war for right or wrong, you end up loosing. If you fight a war for win/loose you got a better chanse of winning....

Static rules for war will only prolong it. War should be fought as that, a war. Not using static rules, but using ROE`s specific for the war.

Conventions sounds good, we throw on a human face to somthing that simply cant ever be "pretty"

If you go to war, accept that and accept that war is bloody darn ugly and no matter how much makeup you put on it, it stil looks ugly so why use the bloody makup in the first place...

for the record
**I have been in 3 conflict zones, seen both civilian and conventional warfare that is how i learned about war**

LTbear

There most certainly are, but you're more likely to learn something from the the objectively-written ones :-P