Interesting website....Definately interesting people

[Harrier Man]

I always thought the chivalry of air combat in WWI is one of the most interesting thresholds in the concept of war....

http://www.richthofen.com/

[jarndice]

The concept of honour in warfare can produce perhaps not quite the result you desire,
For instance the air assault on Crete by Paratroopers of the Herman Goering division was successful not because they outnumbered the British and New Zealand ground forces,
They most certainly did not,
But because the senior NCOs and junior officers ordered their men not to fire upon the Jumpers as they were considered non-combatants until they landed. I should say that this was ignored by a number of individual soldiers.
Even then it was a Pyrrhic victory for the German armed forces to the point that Mr Hitler ordered General Karl Student to never embark on such a venture again.
One of the reasons the British armed forces train to fight at night is to reduce casualty's but from a personal point of view that does demand a very high level of skills to make it effective. Get it wrong and the opposite result is the outcome and I fear honour on the battlefield is now history and so cannot be relied on or expected.
Shaun.

[Harrier Man]

The concept of honour in warfare can produce perhaps not quite the result you desire,
For instance the air assault on Crete by Paratroopers of the Herman Goering division was successful not because they outnumbered the British and New Zealand ground forces,
They most certainly did not,
But because the senior NCOs and junior officers ordered their men not to fire upon the Jumpers as they were considered non-combatants until they landed. I should say that this was ignored by a number of individual soldiers.
Even then it was a Pyrrhic victory for the German armed forces to the point that Mr Hitler ordered General Karl Student to never embark on such a venture again.
One of the reasons the British armed forces train to fight at night is to reduce casualty's but from a personal point of view that does demand a very high level of skills to make it effective. Get it wrong and the opposite result is the outcome and I fear honour on the battlefield is now history and so cannot be relied on or expected.
Shaun.

That's exactly what I meant. It was the last of it with the threshold being air combat in WWI. A pilot would sometimes land to greet the defeated, share a story, the then victor would fly off. It was a sport with the possibility of death... In several years humans will not be on the battlefield. You should see all the tech advances. It's mind blowing... Raytheon has completed it's remote operation tech so any any aircraft can be operated from across the globe through its UAS software. A F-16 could enter combat with no human aboard..

[jarndice]

Harrier Man, Welcome to the Forum,
I hope you get as much from it as I do and any questions you might have we shall do our best to answer, As an aside I was detached from my regiment and was working with the Kestrel Tri-Partite Squadron in Germany in the 60s.
The most challenging part of the job was trying to understand the Italian members of the Squadron,
Shaun.

[jackalope]

It was because at the beginning of WWI people still had manors, for the lack of a better word. But by the end no manners could be found. It's as if civilization itself entered the war as a child but then through blood shed and brutality it learned how cheap life truly is. It left the war traumatized and forever changed. Manors went by the wayside as did so many sons, brothers, fathers, daughters, sisters, wives, and families.

Chivalry became a victim of the Maxim machine gun along with scores of all of our nations bravest young men, while the great generals would keep ordering more over the hill to their deaths.

Mustard gas in the trenches killed and maimed countless troops, my grandfather among them.

Valor and love of country were replaced by fear and hate, survival and animal instincts.

"The Greatest War" was nothing great, there is nothing great in war.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...our toys used to be horrible machines built to do nothing but kill, and I pray they're only used as toys from now on.

[jarndice]

I absolutely agree with you Jack,
It was called for understandable reasons the first industrial War and my Grandfather was killed in the futility that was the Somme,
It also confirmed to the majority of the Population of the United States of America the rightness of the isolationist policy of the 20s and 30s and the great unwillingness of America and Americans to have anything to do with any European War, and I have to wonder whether for all FDRs promises to Churchill to come to Britain's aid if he actually would have been able to given the feelings of Americans against fighting on two fronts,
Indeed it was only because of Mr Hitler's Lunatic declaration of war against the USA in support of his Japanese allies that forced even the most anti war in Europe Americans such as Charles Lindbergh and Ambassador Kennedy to support the President.
Shaun.

[wibblywobbly]

WW3 will be fought with nuclear weapons and robots.
WW4 will be fought with stones and spears.

There was a mustard gas factory not far from me, not a place I would want to work.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25053155

[Panther Ausf G]

Hi Harrier Man
Welcome to the forum
Enjoy and get addicted great hobby.