I think that this is the fundamental mistake that most people (including the Bush Administration) have made about the current conflict. You can see the enemy quite easily in Iraq and Afghanistan because the civilian population is the enemy. By your definition of "people that dont want foriegn forces on their soil" those people are now opposed to the Allied forces and therefore are now combatants.

The ugly reality of the current conflict is that as soon as the Iraqi army shed their uniforms and blended in with society they now turned every civilian into a legitimate target. Why? Because you now cannot tell them apart.

Unfortunately the Allies are treating the very civilian population that picks at them every day as civilians, not combatants. Yet the civilians are engaged in combat with the Allies every day since they dont want them on their soil. This should be inserted into the dictionary as a new definition of the word IRONY...

And yet the Bush Administration gets accused of brutality towards civilians. :doh: :doh:

Well if you want to be technical, the whole U.S. Submarine force doctrine of unrestricted submarine warfare (attack without warning on merchants) was illegal and violation of Geneva Convention. The U.S. reasoned that 1. The Pearl Harbor attack was Illegal 2.Germany was already committing these attacks. However, to my knowledge the British never gave the order to perform unrestricted warfare and this came back in the Nuremberg trials. there was no love in Britain for the u-boats and there was a push for severe punishment for those that ordered the attacks. They wanted Dontiz to hang and because the Americans had performed similar acts in the pacific and because they received some pressure from the U.S. to give him a light punishment, he was spared.

War is hell though, even though we play war simulations we can not experience the true emotions that go along with those events. One simulation that I thing gets close is B-17 Flying fortress. The whole mood of the game is depressing reflecting the mood of the bomber crews that knew that either they would be killed or that they were about to create a firestorm over the civilian population that would kill thousands. Bombs from high altitudes were not precise then. There really is nothing civilized in war and the destruction and death, both military and civilian is one of the reasons we have not seen a large global conflict since World War II.

Unless you've had to do the dirty deeds, you aren't qualified to comment or remark on them.

This thread needs to be locked. And this topic should not appear anymore.

Many people are fond of pointing out that Subsim in general is one of the friendliest, most helpful boards around. I'm not happy about the direction this thread has taken, but this is one of many hundreds, and it's the only one like this right now.

I'm less worried about the level of aggression here than I am about your level of condescencion. If the only time you stop by is to tell us how bad we are, then maybe you're right and it's better if you stay away.

Abour Mortorn MGing suvivors....
Taken from a lookout on the brige.

"The distant rattle of machine-gun fire came to my ears.
"Damm him" Mortorn voive roared. "Roger, have the gun crews knock that machine gun in the motor launch out of the watter"
"Aye, aye sir" Lt. Pane replied.
"Commence firing on the motor launch"
This was follwed by sevral rounds from the deck gun and the rattle of the 20 millmeters.
A sharp explosion by the 20 millimeters caused me to jump. I looked down and saw the barrel pointing in the air and Gerlacher stagered dazedly from the gun. Glinski was sitting on the deck and looking stupidly at his right foot. The shoe lether was brutally torn and I could see blood spurting from his right foot.
"Pharmacist mate to the brige! on the dubble" O'Kane yelled down the voice tube.
A yell went up from the deck-gun crew. I gathered that the motor launch had been hit.
"Cease fireing, cease firing"

The MG on the moter launch had wounded 2 of the Wahoo's crewmen. And only the moter launch was shot at.

Well, that's one version of the story. In another, neither side fired on one another after the boats entered the water. In another, one of the boats fired at the Wahoo, which then proceeded to slaughter every last person in the water.

In the bizarro universe, the Japanese marines marines were welcomed onboard and had a barbacue on the foredeck. :88)

well this was from the vew from one of the lookouts.

While we have beat this topic to death...no pun intended....I am delighted to finally read people speaking about LCdr Morton as merely performing his duty. In another forum here he is being raked over the coals with insinuations he should be considered a war criminal....Good job team.


Note: The 20mm on Wahoo cooked the round in the chamber when the barrel became to hot...The subsequent explosion and shrapnel damaged Glinski's foot....According to Forrest Sterling.

btw...I'm not commenting on this subject anylonger going forward.....After sinking allied shipping for the last 2 subsims I feel as though I should be on trial...j/k.... Really looking forward to the release of SH4....

Oh I took that he got shot. I knew that the other had a shell casing go into his shoulder.

actuly I took the paragraph from "Wake of the Wahoo" and just saud that the 2 men got shot(bad me I know)

Due to the fact that in Japanese captivity you had a good chance of being beheadded, being used as a live bayonet target, medical experiments and in some cases eaten, I have a hard time feeling bad for some guys in a lifeboat.

Good point. Admiral Husband Kimmel, who took the fall for the Pearl Harbor attack, had a son in the submarine service. His boat was damaged and they surfaced and surrendered. They were in a Japanese prison camp when a nearby area was bombed. In retaliation Commander Kimmel and other officers were burned alive by their captors.

What the *******!? Thats sick! :o

I just want to sink some Japs ... :rock: :rock: :rock:

I'm gonna kill me some honkies!

If you want to see really sick then read the book Flyboys by James Bradley (the author of Flags of Our Fathers as well) which documents what happened to the US aviators that were captured and held on Chichi Jimi. Additionally as part of the background for what occured there Bradley also goes into details about the Japanese orders forbidding their troops on New Guinea from eating their own dead, yeah you read that right. Cannabalism was a big enough issue that the Japanese had to issue orders about it specifically...

With that in mind, along with the Japanese record on human rights in China, on Wake after it was captured, in the Phillipines after the fall, in the Solomons, etc. especially combined with the widespread evidence about the treatment given to the remains of Allied KIAs that were recovered from Japanese held territory, and the treatment testified to by liberated POWs then the prevailing attitude of the US troops towards the Japanese is a little bit more understandable.

Wars are always ugly things, but some wars are even uglier for a variety of reasons, and WWII in the PTO was one of the ugliest ever. I don't condone a lot of the actions taken by both sides in the PTO, but I also understand that those were different times and you can't solely judge historical events with modern values. I daresay if any troops today, from any of the countries of any of our forum members were being eaten by the enemy that it would make you feel a little bit differently about that enemy than otherwise would be the case. Barbarism doesn't necessarilly have to be met with barbarism back, but I can understand the pure rage that barbaric acts being perpetrated on your comrades would bring out in an American serviceman in the PTO in WWII, and how a kill 'em all attitude could (and often did) come into place.

Also the Japanese often didn't take kindly to being taken prisoner anyhow. Taking Japanese prisoners was often a very dangerous proposition because they'd rather blow themselves up with a grenade (and take you with them) than suffer the humiliation of being taken as a POW. That also had to factor into any Allied commander's judgement when the issue of whether or not to attempt it came up.