Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Gottii]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/09/living/higher-call-military-chivalry/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

[orange]

Thanks

[Ghost Hunter]

[Saikoyu]

Somedays I don't mind being human.

[ArtOfLight]

Simply beautiful.

[lallara zhuul]

The problem is that these examples were connected to the most evil thing that we humans do.

War.

As long as there is war, these abnormalities are meaningless.

[Bacchanalian]

Is it evil?  Can animals be evil?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/science/22chimp.html?_r=0

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

I will now ruin all of this for you.

Every single one of these that deals with an individual had that individual killed in their respective war.

You may now commence crying.

[ArtOfLight]

The problem is that these examples were connected to the most evil thing that we humans do.

War.

As long as there is war, these abnormalities are meaningless.

I would argue that it makes them even more meaningful. To be surrounded by (what you describe as) the most evil thing we do on all sides and yet still maintain the integrity and humanity within to be capable of compassion and mercy places even more value on your actions.

It is easy to be unkind to the unkind and to show mercy to the merciful, it is significantly harder to be kind to the cruel and show mercy to your enemies.

[Natalcya Katla]

Showing mercy to your enemy is overall a good thing, I agree. Actively assisting your enemy back to his own lines, especially right after said enemy has conducted an attack on what may well have been a civilian target, is a different story entirely. If that B-17 was so helpless, wouldn't it have made more sense to force it to make an emergency landing, taking both the plane and the crew out of the war entirely, hopefully without killing them in the process? I have to wonder if the bombardier on that B-17 showed the same restraint that German pilot showed, the next time he looked down his Norden bombsight at a city.

I don't know. If that had been a story of two fighter pilots, I'd feel a lot less ambivalent about it.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

If that B-17 was so helpless, wouldn't it have made more sense to force it to make an emergency landing, taking both the plane and the crew out of the war entirely, hopefully without killing them in the process?

The germans were not taking those bombers out of the war, they were repairing them and using them for special missons, themselves.

[orange]

enemy has conducted an attack on what may well have been a civilian target

For the most part, USAAF Bomber Wings, or 8th Air Force focused on attempting to hit targets with military relevance (unlike the Italian airpower advocate Douhet).  Since the ability to accurately hit targets was limited this required large groups of bombers dropping bombs in the general vicinity of the target.  The Norden Bombsight actually meant that 8th Air Force flew day-time missions to accurately hit the intended militarily relevant target.

If that B-17 was so helpless, wouldn't it have made more sense to force it to make an emergency landing, taking both the plane and the crew out of the war entirely, hopefully without killing them in the process

A largely crippled B-17 limping along would be making an emergency landing regardless of whatever airfield it landed at.   Forcing a landing at a non-airfield would likely have been more of a controlled crash.

A fighter pilot forcing a bomber to land sounds simple enough, but it is not as if he can very well hold 8 men at gun point until an army unit arrives to take custody.   Any Americans or Brits on the ground in western Europe would make every effort to evade capture and make contact with non-Germans, preferably partisans/resistance movements.

The plane was likely stripped for any useful parts and merely replaced by a new one freshly flown via Canada & Iceland to the UK.

[Natalcya Katla]

Yes, the USAAF were more conscious (or conscientuous) about their targets than the RAF were by comparison, and conducted their bombing in daylight as opposed to the Brits. Even so, the event described took place after such raids as Operation Gomorrah, which inflicted huge civilian casualties and included American bombers. To be fair, I don't know how many of those casualties were inflicted by the Americans, but then again, would the German fighter pilot know?

As for the other comments, my point stands. This really seems like crossing the line of treason, to me. It's precisely as if a Spitfire pilot should have seen a damaged German bomber safely back across the channel after it was done dropping bombs on London.

[Matoko]

I think that's the point, though. It technically was treason, and possibly more damaging in the long run. And yet, in spite of that, he decided to send the bomber crew home anyway.

We're not celebrating strategic sense or valor. We're celebrating humans being human. Because in that moment, when said German pilot realized the bomber was shot up beyond repair and most of the crew was either dead or wounded, he didn't see a plane full of the enemy. He saw a plane full of people. People just like him. And yes, it is exactly like if a Spitfire ace spotted a German bomber limping away, realized it was barely flying, could see the crew, wounded, through holes in the fuselage, and lingered long enough to stare the pilot and co-pilot in the face, and decided to fly them home instead of shooting them down. Again, that's kind of the point of the story.

[Vikarion]

The problem is that these examples were connected to the most evil thing that we humans do.

War.

As long as there is war, these abnormalities are meaningless.

Why is war evil? Yes, it kills us. Yes, people die. But people die anyway, and wars have forced innovations and creations that, to date, have probably saved or will save more lives than the wars took. And wars have, many times, forced us to re-evaluate or destroy ideas that might otherwise have caused much more harm than they did.

If your argument is that war is inherently evil, it might be noted that ants and chimpanzees also conduct wars. Are they evil too?

In the long, long term view, as long as we can avoid nuking each other, war may be one of the things that has most benefited us.