Shooting at unarmed people floating in the sea is murder, even at war (one have to be really a wacko to enjoy doing this).

There is no need to do such a thing, not even for pious reasons, not while we have a chance to rescue them (which is very different from a case in which we really CANT do a damn thing to save someone from a certain death and is better to put a bullet on him rather than leaving him in pain)

Besides, in RL people in liferafts HAVE a chance of being rescued by other type of ships, or even reach the shore (Bligh and some other crewmen casted away from the HMS Bounty survived a 3600 nm travel in a small boat!), which should not be our concern.

All we want is their ships.

This is a cool idea. You could have them take up any extra crew spots you have on board...all spots full, no more prisoners!

I'd still want silent running to work, ("I said, put him in submission!")...repair times would be greatly increased while you have men guarding prisoners instead of manning their stations.

Exactly my point. You have to have some give and take. Real captains took risks to secure POWs as you didn't know what was going to happen when you got them aboard. As we don't really have any "real" danger associated with taking a prisoner, you need to have it affect something major so it's not just "free" renown.


Excellent suggestion.


Chuck

I just send a radio message so my good mate the Admiral can send some ships out to pickup the special cargo.

No POWS in my boat. My crew would just kill them. Especially after what happened to little Johnny. :roll:

In general, the "all we want is their ships" is true, but when facing a suicidal enemy that elects to fight to the death (pointlessly), every one you leave alive at large is another that you must kill later. I've read many accounts of sinking in the PTO, and I'm always amazed that so many actually survived and were picked up.

Might as well kill them while it's easy to do so, and before they can kill some of your own. Note that I don't think this applies to a non-suicidal enemy.

Think what you would do if your country was being invaded. I'm sure plenty of French sacrificed themselves for the benefit of the Allied forces.

Many of the Japanese were of the opinion that they must stop the American's reaching japan to save their families. Misguided bravery maybe, but certainly not pointless when you think of what they were fighting for. Your home. :cry:

To respond to the OP: I have successfully sunk a few life rafts with my deck gun. I don't relish in it... merely wanted to see if it was possible.

Nice one Tater,

so germans machine gunning survivors of torpedoed american and british ships = bad, evil etc.

while americans machine gunning survivors of torpedoed japanese ships = good, worthy etc.

That's war for you, even 60 years later, it would seem.

They're all evil!! Except Australians who did it..... :rotfl:

I've heard all this before in the IL-2 forums.
Than it was "should you kill the pilot while he's hanging in his chute?" Most pilots thought it dishonorable and wouldn't do it.

Others took the more practical stand "I kill him today! or he kills me tomorrow!"

I found what I thought was a middle ground, if over my territory I'd spare him in hopes he'd be captured.

Over his territory I'd kill him, knowing he'd most likely be back in the fight in a day or two. But than I'm only killing pixels ain't I! It is ironic we chose to play war games, hiding in ambush for hr's sometimes days so we can "without warning" kill as many pixels as we can. Than argue the morality of it all :oops: I've never been to war!...thank God or evolution or whatever, so I don't think I'm qualified to sit in judgment of what these men did 60 years ago...in the heat of battle!

As for American sub commanders ordering the shooting of survivors I've never seen any evidence of this. That's not to say it didn't happen, but someone claims to have seen video of it I'd like to see it...got link?

It's a known FACT that Mush Morton on the Wahoo ordered his crew to shoot up the lifeboats of a transport they had just sunk. Too bad they killed more POWs than they did Japanese. His men even shot one that was trying to surrender since Morton didn't want any "Nips" on his boat.

http://www.warfish.com/patrol3con.html ...A good link that puts it in perspective. Much the same as shooting parachutes, all sides did it...but it was not common practice or policy...not for most anyway.

Both fiercely aggressive and competitive by nature, the intersection of Morton and the boats of BUYO MARU was a collision of personality and power. In the middle of fourteen hours of combat and faced for the first time with personal contact with the enemy, emotions ran exceedingly hot. Morton clearly viewed the men in the water as combatant soldiers only recently on their way to fight Americans in the jungles of New Guinea - a valid assumption based on the information available to him. General hostility became personified in those "troops". And the crack and whiz of rounds fired at WAHOO as they approached reinforced his assumptions. Morton's order to fire the first single round into the boats was both a challenge and a dare. The response of machine gun fire was like the opening kickoff to a football game. One Morton was determined not to lose.

The only perspective that that article provides is that of the contemporary US right, whose desperate need to burnish America's halo is matched only by the nationalistic of all other nations and empires, past and present.

Removing the patriotic, red-blooded man, 9-11 talk, what you have is that it was OK, because he was really, really angry and anyway the Japs attacked us first, didn't they.

This sort of thing could be used to justify almost any atrocity comitted by anybody.

My opinion is that you would not agree that an angry Iraqi, whose family members were bombed by the US in gulf wars 1 and 2, and who has recently blown up a Humvee full of GIs would be justified in his actions. Certainly not if he then shot those GIs while crawling from their burning car.

So I am left wondering if you believe atrocities are only atrocities if performed by non-Americans, and that if Americans "cross the line" somehow, it must be for natural human reasons.

I am not anti-american, quite the opposite. But the US conduct in wars of the past has not been blameless. Americans fought war using similar brutal methods to those that others used, and in the case of air raids, the UK and US worked at a whole level beyond what anyone else did.

Where America proved its moral worth was not in the conduct of the war, but in its conduct after the war, which was, in my opinion, a display of greatness of spirit without historical precedent.

I leave them alone to drift in the sea unless they are survivors from a destroyer which banged up my boat then are surface and mow them all down with my AA guns. :arrgh!:

It's just a shame the Americans didn't start carnage of some form two years earlier. Australia and New Zealand already had no illusions about the Japanese. They were coming :gulp: .

Havn't had an inclination to try and use guns on em, damn tricky to ram the little blighters though, those guys can really pull those oars!!

Anyone else noticed when the rafts are bumped together they make big ship hull sounds? like they are steel hulled 5,000 ton vessels or something :doh:

:down: :down: :down:

Im just really surprised how many of you is gunning down the survivors.

Your "simulation" of behaviour of US sub crews is much worse than behaviour of total majority of German U-boot crews in WWII

shame on you.


Read this article and think about yourself


http://uboat.net/articles/index.html?article=55

Since it's a GAME, I've shot at absolutely everything that I could that floats/dives/flies/walks in the GAME - enemy, allied, neutral. Why? First off, because I could. Second, it's a GAME.

Every japanese not killed at sea heading to the front (or heading home, had we had to invade---a certainty without the bombing campaign) would have been killed anyway, the only difference is that allied troops would have lost their lives doing so. That is 98-99% true since only 1-2% of japanese surrendered. Allied units surrounded could have bled the IJA very badly indeed, but they knew they'd still eventually lose, so they surrendered (Singapore, Hong Kong, Philipines, etc) to spare lives on both sides. For their trouble they were brutalized and murdered.

So churning the water seems pretty reasonable instead of digging them out of caves with TNT and napalm later at great loss of allied life (look at the bloodbaths the Marines faced doing such warm work).

At that point, the PTO became a "no holds barred" conflict for the most part. The Allies treated POWs well, but took very few POWs. It took "bribes" to the troops to even get them to accept japanese surrenders since they would frequently use surrender as a guise to kill our troops. Had large units surrendered more, it might have been different, but the numbers even trying were so low, the % of faked surrenders was high.

It's interesting to note that in the ETO POWs were usually taken in sizable groups, not individuals (at least by the US). This suggests that singleton surrenders might not have been worth the trouble to accept.

I'm an American! I'm not from Mars,...that means I have as much right as anyone else to inflict pain and suffering.

I'm also a realist, there's no such thing as a fair fight and the end justifies the means. We (the Allies) won the war because we inflicted more death and destruction faster than our enemy.

As for killing pixels...I'm a realist, it's a pixel...

Regardless of whether it's a game or not,the lack of morals I find in people these days is a bit frightning. Makes it easier to see how some soldiers in Iraq can commit outright murder and rape. Somewhere along the line,morality got thrown out the window.