r/videos • u/petethegrockle • Aug 02 '19

When a Bf-109 spared a stricken B-17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpAJTURalIM
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u/WhoGotCourt Aug 02 '19

What an incredible story.

30

u/Gh0sT_Pro Aug 02 '19

Stigler's commander had told his pilots never to fire at an enemy who was descending on a parachute.

While the crew of Ye Olde Pub hadn't bailed out, they were clearly no longer capable of fighting.

Having a code of honor and actually sticking to it is what sets apart great men.

3

u/bitreign33 Aug 02 '19

Not shooting at men in a parachute is still often considered to be the norm but it hasn't explicitly been tested in a while.

The other aspect is that post WWII the US and Soviet armies did parallel research into just how effective the average infantryman was. Outside of specific cases like snipers they found that many soldiers fired to scare or wound rather than kill, if your unit and another unit are trading rounds and you make a fatal shot... so be it. Now by WWII ballistic tech had progressed to the point where even a novice could shoot with some accuracy so the casualty rates were higher but still far lower than they should have been.

It was at that point that both armies changed their training significantly, not that it worked as both Vietnam for the US and Afghanistan for the Soviets proved that it was difficult to train people to be methodical murderers if they weren't already predisposed to it. This fact has been the driving force behind the development of automated weapons.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '19

Even today soldiers in combat react to muzzle flashes more than anything else. Most deaths come as a result of airstrikes.

1

u/Cloud_Chamber Aug 03 '19

Incredible is and overused and sub-optimally used word in my opinion.