Italian, well why didn't you say so... Italy really depends what dates as they changed side on an almost daily basis :har:


(Sorry Regio if you're reading this!)

In GWX 3 they become Axis on 6/9/1940

Just because they did not take prisoners doesn't mean they simply shot survivors in the water. This would have been considered WAY outside the established rules of conduct, even for unrestricted submarine warfare.

In many cases they would come near enough to any lifeboats to talk to the survivors and get a positive ID on the ship they'd just sunk and any other info her men were willing to give them. There are accounts of u-boat crews passing over some basic supplies if needed as well as giving survivors their position and a course towards the nearest landfall, even charts and navigational aids if they had them to spare and the survivors had none. Also accounts of u-boat commanders finding and hailing neutral ships in the area and sending or bringing them back to pick up survivors of enemy ships they'd sunk.

Even the Laconia Order, which officially forbade u-boat crews from picking up or rendering extensive aid to survivors of their attacks, was only issued after an Allied plane attacked a u-boat that was attempting to rescue the Laconia's survivors.

Also you have to remember that the men on board u-boats were themselves sailors who might at any time be left at the mercy of the open sea and the elements of nature, and who were very much aware of this fact. To turn one's weapons on a helpless castaway already in that situation would be, for lack of a better phrase, a huge karmic no-no.

And of course there was also the possibility that one might be found out and held accountable for the killing of essentially helpless survivors, as was the case with Heinz-Wilhelm Eck. He ordered his men to machine-gun the wreckage of a sinking Greek ship, thereby killing some of her surviving crew. A coupla months later he was a POW in the hands of the British, who recovered his boat's war diary which contained a record of the incident. Eck and two of his officers were tried and convicted of war crimes and subsequently executed in 1945.

ah ok..... i didnt know about that...... makes me look at it in a different way..... i had never leaned that... google hear i come!
thx frau:salute:



http://www.uboataces.com/battle-laconia.shtml

Much better to die either in a blazing inferno, or slowly drifting through the Atlantic for days than a simple (?) shot to the head... Glad it's not my choice :down:

Quote from uboataces"Donitz stood trial for war crimes and the Laconia order was used as a basis of indictment against him. Most surprisingly, he received support from some of the most respected figures in the US Navy, Admital Chester Nimitz who came to his defense and said that the United States had operated under the same engagements of unrestricted warfare. Despite the evidence of allied practice, Donitz was convicted of war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal and sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison. The U-boat crews deeply resented this action and felt that they were being prosecuted for the threat they had posed to the allies rather than for war crimes."

thats pretty bad that happened!... he tried to save all those people and went to jail for it!:cry:



this guy did machine gun survivors

http://www.uboat.net/articles/index....icle=18&page=2

Wow, excellent article! :yeah:

NB:

Edit: I confess I'm still woefully underinformed about Onkel Karl's trial and conviction, but I do wonder if things would've been much different had he NOT ended the war as Hitler's chosen successor as head of state. I mean, they couldn't put Hitler on trial because he was already dead (the bloody coward).

Yes he did.
But bear in mind that the Allies investigated extensively after the war looking for this sort of thing, and this is the only documented case they could find.

thats another completely different story.... they never officialy found his (Hitler's) body... it was supposedly burned and buried!

As was said, with the Lifeboats and Debris mod you cannot harm the lifeboats or the people in them. You can even run them over with your u-boat - they will pass right through you. Gunfire has no effect on them.

Neutrals will treat you as hostile if you fire on them. That country will treat you as hostile and fire upon you and take evasive maneuvers for 24 hours after you fire on them.

You will lose renown for sinking neutral ships. Lose enough renown and it can end your career.

Rule of thumb: If its lights are on it is definitely neutral. Lights off it could be neutral or not - check the flag.

Steve

thank you :salute:

I'll see if I still have a little something hanging around.
:hmmm:

I never got around to adding bodies but you can shoot them.
They just disappear.
And no! You get no renown or lose renown.
They don't work that way.
(Someone would mod a billion points renown as a cheat!)
:har:

that would be easy done...lol

ahahaha green ships :cry:
you're lucky all you lose is renown.

I know that in the Pacific, Mush Morton machine gunned Japanese survivors in the water and actually got a medal for it. In fact, this video shows that gunning survivors in the water was considered legitimate policy.

Then there are the H M S Torbay incidents in which Capt. Miers ordered the shooting of German survivors in rafts on two separate occasions. He entered both incidents into his log. The Admiralty sent him a strongly worded letter afterward but nothing else.

That is because the Japanese survivors had a nasty habit of trying to kill their rescuers.

We've had that discussion several times before. Morton could be culpable, but he claimed they shot at his boat first. The video is edited, and is proof of nothing. Yes, we see guns shooting. Yes, we see people in the water, and some footage of people apparently being shot. But there is no accompanying explanation. Was it malicious, or was there a reason. We don't know, nothing is explained and claiming that it was undeserved, or deserved, or that it was considered policy to wantonly shoot survivors in the water. Proof would be actual orders showing that it was considered policy. Anything else is speculation.

IF they were in the water, why not just leave them there? What threat is a man floating in the water to a ship, or even a some survivors in a life boat? It was a war crime by our own standards. Eck was executed for doing the very same thing to survivors in a life raft.

Pretty damn cold.

Eck's side didn't win the war.

Steve