Shooting the Cockpit - War Crime or just immoral?

[TeaAndScones 2]

By laws of armed conflict, shooting a parachuting Pilot is illegal.  But as long as that pilot is still in his plane, would shooting directly at him still be considered a war crime, or just an immoral thing to do?

 

Thanks, DatBritish.

Edited February 9, 2014 by DatBritish

[Stratos 3,168]

IIRC the wars are designed to kill the enemy, what's the difference between shooting the cockpit and shooting a enemy infantryman in the head?

[+Gepard 10,263]

No. The answer is no.

The reason of the prohibition to shoot on parachuting pilots is that it is forbitten to open the fire on defenseless people. Look to "Convetion of Geneva" and "Land War regulations of Den Haag".

To come under this potection the pilot must mark hisself with a colored parachute (white, orange or others). If he use a green or olive or other kind camoflaged parachute he marks hisself as airborne ranger and shooting on airborne rangers is allowed.

Edited February 9, 2014 by Gepard

[macelena 1,070]

As long as he is in the cockpit, he is still fighting. While it would be better to neutralize any threat without killing the enemy, there is usually no option. Also, in modern aircraft it is already hard enough to hit the plane for you to prevent hitting the cockpit, while killing the pilot is the only way to ensure the aircraft is downed, a trouble wich became more prevalent with aircraft wich would have allowed better that kind of target discrimination, such as WWI fighters

 

Personally, i think that if a cause is worth a war, when human lives are on the line, what would be wrong is not to kill the enemy out of sportmanship or something like that. If i was the pilot of the Me-109 who escorted a damaged B-17 back to England in WW2, i wouldn´t have hesitated in shooting it down as it was still a threat. The bomber could have been repaired and the crew could have survived to fly another mission. If they bailed out, it would be absolutely different.

 

 

It would be like saying that killing enemies with drones or helicopters is immoral because they can´t fight back. By the same reason, i think the insurgents are not to blame for using IEDs as a weapon, as they know this works and any other measure would be probably uneffective. What would be to immoral would be to use either method to target non-combattants.

 

We can discuss how immoral is a cause or how unnecesarily cruel you are against the enemy, but when there is a reasonable advantage to a method of killing an enemy, go ahead.

[+Muesli 2,151]

Morality is relative. Been in a war and I know it...

[fallenphoenix1986 603]

Neither wrong or immoral, chivalry in air combat is for the large part a myth. Take for example a CAS pilot deliberately targeting a formation of infantry, this is perfectly acceptable, so why should the pilot be offered some kind of protection from being personally targeted when its his job to target others?

 

Craig

[Caesar 305]

A Tomcat driver who became the gunnery training lead back in the early 1980's used to show students a picture of his pipper dead center on an opponent's fuselage during a dissimilar engagement.  He would ask the student body: "What's wrong with this shot?"  No student would answer, so after a few seconds he would respond: "THE PIPPER'S NOT ON HIS F****** HEAD!"  He'd then show another frame from a few seconds later with his pipper square on the cockpit.  The point was that if you shot someone down and they lived, they'd learn from their mistake, come back, and possibly put some bullets through YOUR dome; better to kill the enemy pilot than let him learn your tactics and tell his friends.  This was reiterated by one of my own instructors back when I was in ROTC, surprisingly enough.  

 

It is the preferred gun solution to have for some pilots and it also is not illegal.  Like it has been said here above, if the pilot is still in his/her jet, you absolutely can put a stream of bullets through the cockpit and you aren't breaking LOAC or other international rules of war.

[MigBuster 2,861]

I remember 

 

A Tomcat driver who became the gunnery training lead back in the early 1980's used to show students a picture of his pipper dead center on an opponent's fuselage during a dissimilar engagement.  He would ask the student body: "What's wrong with this shot?"  No student would answer, so after a few seconds he would respond: "THE PIPPER'S NOT ON HIS F****** HEAD!"  He'd then show another frame from a few seconds later with his pipper square on the cockpit.  The point was that if you shot someone down and they lived, they'd learn from their mistake, come back, and possibly put some bullets through YOUR dome; better to kill the enemy pilot than let him learn your tactics and tell his friends.  This was reiterated by one of my own instructors back when I was in ROTC, surprisingly enough.  

 

It is the preferred gun solution to have for some pilots and it also is not illegal.  Like it has been said here above, if the pilot is still in his/her jet, you absolutely can put a stream of bullets through the cockpit and you aren't breaking LOAC or other international rules of war.

 

I remember an RAF pilot saying a very similar thing in an interview - either John Nichol or John Peters (shot down in Tornado GR1 1991) - so expect its same all round.

 

Unless the jets flying in a straight line I expect you probably don't really get a say where the shells end up twisting all over the sky!

[33LIMA 972]

Notwithstanding the movie re-incarnation (or rather, re-invention), wasn't it Manfred von Richtofen who's credited with the dictum, 'Aim for the man not the machine; if attacking a two seater, kill the gunner first.'

 

Works for me:

 

 

As for real life, why on earth would it be a war crime to shoot an enemy (who had not surrendered or equivalent) in the air or on the ground? I appreciate we're living in times when the Army's marksmanship principles training film* is no likely longer called 'Shoot to Kill' but sheesh! 

 

As for shooting people on parachutes, Goering reportedly sounded out German fighter leaders during the Battle of Britian about the practice, asking them how they would react if ordered to do this. He was reportedly rebuffed. Apparently his opponent Dowding thought that the Luftwaffe would be justified in shooting British pilots parachuting to earth over England as, though helpless, they were escaping, potentially to fight another day. From recently reading Norbert Hannig's autobiography 'Luftwaffe Figher Ace', it's evident that some US pilots agreed with Dowding.

 

 

* the one from my day I was pleased to see is on Youtube:

 

[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

The weakest part of any warplane from the Taube to the F-22 has always been the same: the pilot's head. René Fonck, an extraordinary sharpshooter, boasted that when flying the SPAD, he could put bullets like with his hand. He usually downed a target with a single burst of 6-10 bullets in all, and no wonder, at least one was usually found in the pilot's head. For the campaigns I'm designing for the WW2 MTO, I have studied many aces of that front; regarding the best marksmen of their nation, for example Hans-Joachim Marseille over Libya and Egypt, George Beurling over Malta, or Pierre Le Gloan over Syria-Lebanon, few of the pilots shot down by these aces did survive. Marseille especially was renowned as a wizard for deflection shots, which allowed him to ignore the dorsal armor plate of the enemy cockpits.

[DirtyBird 0]

I have heard (over the years) a number of similar anecdotes to that mentioned by Ceaser in this thread ....  immoral, "unsporting"?   Perhaps.

Damned effective though.  Guilty of it myself in sims where it's possible.  As good an aiming point as any.

[+Jug 99]

I'm with Caesar on this one.  Only exception would be a civilian airliner.  A target is a target and only one way to make sure you don't have to fight him tomorrow.

[chuckyeagar 0]

If you consider this in a World War 2 context then if an RAF pilot is attacking a German bomber from behind then his first action was often to kill the tail gunner because this meant he could continue the attack without being fired on. If attacking from in front then the obvious target was the cockpit because this disabled front gunners and quickly sent the plane out of control if pilot and co-pilot were injured. Rear attack targets were often the engines and wing tanks to disable the plane and start fires. With 8 .303 machine guns which is what the early Spitfires and Hurricanes had there was no way to be very ethical about what you shot at. The decisions were tactical not ethical. German fighter pilots were trained to attack Flying Fortresses in frontal atacks so they avoided the massed firepower of the mostly rearward facing guns. Again the target had to be the cockpit because it was the largest thing in the sights..

 

Another issue is where you are fighting. British fighter pilots were generally pleased to see German bomber crews escaping by parachute over Britain because they would end up in POW camps anyway and they had no wish to kill brave aircrew for the sake of it but in RAF operations over German occupied France you could argue that there was less case for not targetting the cockpit because a German crewmember who escaped by parachute could be back on active service the next day.

 

War is a ruthless businesss and sadly chivalry in war is often just a romantic myth. Firing on Red Cross planes used for picking up German aircrew from the sea was specifically authorised by the RAF on the (dubious) grounds that the floatplanes were being used for reconaisance purposes. RAF pilots were not happy about this but many would have done as they were ordered.

[+CrazyhorseB34 937]

OMG! Where the hell else are you supposed to shoot?

 

The image below depicts the perfect reticule lay for a gun kill from an F-14A. The target is an F-15. Reason is: If you do have a lead error, induced by g-load or opponents actions, usually those factors will cause your fall of shot to be short. If you super impose the pipper on the pilots helmet if no errors are present you will hit him in the grape with your rounds. If error does exist your fall of shot will still be on the target but instead of the pilots head the shot will land aft of the pilot on the fuselage.

 

 

When I play First Eagles 2 I usually don't shoot until I am close enough to shoot the pilot directly in the back of the skull. Dicta Boelke.

 

Who shoots civilian airliners anyway besides the Russians and the Israelis?

 

It is war is it not?

Edited February 21, 2014 by CrazyhorseB34

[+Muesli 2,151]

"Rules", "chivalry", "fairness", "Geneva Convention"...
I was in Bosnia and drove my UN ambulance. You guess where I frequently found bullet holes....
Make a picture with it: me being the nice and friendly UN, me being part of a humanitarian effort,

me being a medic driving a Red Cross vehicle. Rules and romance are for stories and movies...
 

Edited February 22, 2014 by Muesli

[+CrazyhorseB34 937]

I know how you feel. A red crescent does not show up in a tank thermal imaging gun sight.