Why? If one does not want to risk getting shot down, don't fly at all.
It's more fun if you need to be careful when and where you jump.

Contentious stuff, this 'shooting men dangling from parachutes' business.

I'd rather we didn't lose sight of the fact that this is a game and at some point, we have to decide where to draw the line in simulating the business of war - which is, of course, killing.

Take Red Orchestra, for example. It can be fairly gruesome, and the scream of a wounded man can sound pretty harrowing. I for one am grateful that it's but a brief shout, and they don't go onto simulate the agonizing slow deaths that many combatants suffered, otherwise the soundtrack to many rounds would be mostly the pitiful crying of the mortally wounded.

As I said, you have to draw the line somewhere, or it ceases to be entertaining for many.

The bottom line is that this is a game and that in this and many other games it's fun to shoot at people, because it's a game.
And even if there were a difference between shooting a person in a plane or hanging from a parachute in real life that doesn't necessarily mean that someone playing that game have to care about that doubtful difference.

It wasn't a doubtful difference to the men at the time, according to their memoirs.

Anyway, you can argue it back and forth as much as you like. Won't make a blind bit of difference to what we get in the end. Personally, I won't do it in game. I don't much care if others want to.

The result is still the same.
Either way, killing a man is a monstrous thing, taking something that you have no right to and that no one can ever bring back. Whether or not that fellow human is in an aircraft or not doesn't change that fact one bit.

Why don't you, if you don't mind? Is it because you role-play and try to get into the spirit of things or some other reasons?

Well, to me it's all about the air-combat. I want to fight against and best other pilots and planes. Once their aircraft is out of the fight, I wonder how much ammo/fuel I have left and how I can be best effective with the resources I have left to me.

It's just how I like to play it. I suppose to a certain extent, we all role-play, in that we're flying representations of 1940s aircraft in a representation of 1940s air warfare. I suppose to some, it is just a video game and the planes could be pink and the environment could be the surface of Mars, but I like the setting.

I'm not unaware of how some pilots in particular theatres thought the killing of pilots a valid tactic. It's just not something I really want to spend my spare time pretending to do.

I see, thanks.

The only time I do it (chute shooting) is when I know it's some big mouth "ace" that has been talking smack in chat all evening long, or team killers, or similar situations.

Some players just deserve it.

I would never go out of my way to shoot a player in their parachute just to do it. That said I don't think getting upset over it on these boards is really a big deal.

Now, how about a flyable Walrus?

The day I can buy these to get some idea of flying the aircraft in CoD is the day I will be a happy man. :-P