Group C is protected by the Second Geneva Convention, so shooting at them or leaving them in the water is a warcrime. I was told when I did my military service(in Sweden) that group A is also protected but I can’t find the actual treaty.
I’ve read (I think it was in a Stephen Ambrose book, if that matters) an account of the Bulge that’s sheds a little light on this distinction. The Americans were hunkered down defending a wooded ridge (Elsenborn Ridge maybe?) when a lone Bf-109 makes its appearance. Under the combined AA fire of the entire ridge, this guy attacks the position solo, gets hit, rolls over and bails out.
The Americans watched him with grudging admiration.
After a few moments of descent, swinging in his chute, the German pilot unholsters a pistol and begins shooting downward into the woods. The entire ridge erupted in counterfire, promptly shredding the pilot.
That’s what I figured. I was just trying to give the Sargeant Major the benefit of the doubt that he was intellectually qualified to command anything more powerful than a potato gun.
The only thing I could think of was that if you came under sudden mortar attack or something and you were outside the tank, you might want to jump into a ditch instead of being relatively exposed by climbing on top of the tank to get back inside (is there a hatch underneath the tank?).
Yeah, he’s awesome. He acts a lot too. I remember seeing him in Platoon and a bunch of 90s Steven Segal type movies.
Couldn’t have been that fluid. The good guys were in a trench line and the bad guys had set up a bunch of encampments.
Along somewhat these lines, a couple of years ago I read an excerpt from an official report by a Canadian tank unit in Italy in 1944 on an encounter between their new upgunned Sherman “Firefly” tanks and a couple of German Panthers. One of the two enemy tanks was knocked out by penetrations of the side hull and turret armour (comparatively thin on the Panther) but the second, they eventually determined, had been hit on the main gun barrel by an armour-piercing shell, which had penetrated at an angle, been deflected down the interior of the gun tube, exited the open breech and bounced around the interior of the turret (to the great detriment of the crew).
Given the detail I provided, it’s not bad thinking, but it wasn’t that “intense” at the time; we were still early in the “Desert Shield” part of the operation, waayyy back from the Iraqi border.
Later, just before the “Air” part of the campaign began, we started moving forward, and let me tell you something about norther Saudi Arabia: “flat as a pancake” doesn’t even begin to describe it. An artillery unit would’ve had a hard time sneaking up on us. And by that point, we were so “mobile” that, other than going to the latrine (the hole in the ground that you just dug, right behind the tank) or essential track maintenence, we didn’t get off the tanks. Period.
We slept, ate, stood watch, washed up, and did laundry, all on the tank. Food, water, and mail were delivered directly to us.
The closest we had to an “incident” were some engineers training with demo a few clicks in front of us. Our driver was checking the engine oil levels, and when the first “charge” went off, he kicked the “bitch plate” (engine access cover, so named because it’s, well, a bitch to get on-and-off) overboard, damned near jumped over the turret, and was in the driver’s seat, all in about 3 seconds flat.
I was copping Z’s in the gunner’s seat, and had the power on, weapon set to coax, and was moving the turret before I was really awake.
Someone mentioned “Skirting,” or Schurzen, upthread. In this picture, you can clearly see the M1’s skirting just above the road wheels.
The British, French, Germans, Russians, Israelis, and even the Chinese do that nowadays.
It’s meant to detonate shaped-charge rounds like the HEAT round prior to it impacting on the hull, or perhaps I should say “inner hull,” as the “skirting” provides a partial “outer hull.” This causes the HEAT round’s “jet” to partially dissipate prior to impacting the “inner hull,” significantly reducing its effectiveness.
I believe the practice originated with German tanks in WWII, to help stop powerful Russian anti-tank rifles; it’s use was adapted/adopted after Vietnam by the West for defense against shaped-charge projectiles and rockets.
Reactive armor serves a similar purpose, but is different in function. In a nutshell, it uses a shaped charge set to blow outwards to defeat the “jet” of incoming shaped-charge munitions.
The armored skirts on the M1 are about 2" thick, and are of the “Colonel Sander’s 11 Secret Ingredients, Kill Yourself Before Looking At It” special armor, but not all skirts are armor; in fact, most are just ~1/16" aluminum. The actual armored skirts only cover critical hull areas.
cough cough
See post number 25, great minds and all that… 
I had a similar shot of a palestinian kid (maybe 6 or 7) throwing a rock at a Merkava. Nevermind the politics behind it, the shot was absolutely beautiful, but I can’t seem to find it back
EDIT : ah, here’s a copy, sorry about the size : http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bgoodsel/post911/2002pix/boy-against-tank.jpg
And then there’s “grunts sitting on the tank for a free ride”, also known as ablative armor 
Why are infantry known as “crunchies” instead of “squishies”?
Thanks,
Rob
Vertebrae.
And ribs.
But mostly vertebrae.
Man, have you heard that the Army is now deploying soldiers equipped with endoskeletons? Cool stuff.
It’s not professional courtesy. It’s the Law of Land Warfare. Also, parachutists are not exempt from hostility. Only those parachuting from a disabled aircraft are exempt. Airborne infantry and the like are fair game even while still descending under canopy.
Personnel who just escaped their destroyed tank are now “dismounted infantry” by default and therefore can be engaged unless they are surrendering. If they are running away, that is not surrendering. If a person jumps out of his tank with his hands in the air, that is entirely different than running away.
The basic idea is that a pilot descending from a disabled aircraft cannot possibly pose a threat. He is out of the fight. If, upon landing, he decides to evade the enemy, he is now a combatant. The enemy does not have to give him any special treatment. If the pilot does not surrender, then there is no requirement to attempt to capture him as opposed to just shooting him. However, in the eyes of the enemy, the pilot is much more valuable alive, and he’s most likely not well armed. So they’re likely going to attempt to capture him for their own benefit. But until he is captured, that pilot can shoot back and kill the enemy.
Once captured, the pilot is no longer legally allowed to kill the enemy. He is now a POW. If he happens to escape their custody, he still cannot kill the enemy until he’s been returned to freindly lines. Just the same, the enemy are no longer allowed to kill him just for escaping and running away.
Note the difference between “escaping” and “evading”. The latter is a combatant. The former is a noncombatant.
Sailors floating helplessly in the water after their ship sinks are just that–helpless. When they reach land, it is in their best interest to surrender, but until then they are protected under the Laws of War. When they get to shore, they can surrender, or evade. Choice is theirs.
It works both ways, though. An ejected pilot is not allowed to fire at the enemy until he has landed. (Airborne infantry can fire the entire descent. And they can be fired at)
Sailors in the water cannot shoot boats or planes in the area. The same laws that protect them demand that they also not fight back while protected.
If a protected person exempts himself by becoming offensive, he can be attacked without breaking any laws.
Just to clarify something in case there is any Navy folk.
WRT to my statement “it is in their best interest to surrender”. All soldiers have the duty to resist capture for as long as they still have the means to.
If a sailor jumps from his burning ship and makes it to an enemy controled beach… unarmed… he should consider himself “captured”. There is an important difference between being “captured” and “surrendering”. Semantics, maybe. But important nontheless.
In the Sgt. Rock (or Sgt Fury & his Howling Commandos) comics I read as a kid, the OP situation happened, oh, once/comic. Lone infantryman with a machine gun fires on a tank (budda-budda-budda…), resulting in explosion (fagroon!)
A figure of speech. And ExTank explained it quite well.
Thanks again. 
What about killing the enemy in the process of escaping? It seems to me that most methods of escaping from a POW camp (or at least, most practical ones) would involve killing some of the guards. And as I understand it, a prisoner of war has a duty to escape if possible.
In the literature about American POWs in Vietnam, escapees went to great length to not kill guards, even surrendering rather than killing them. I thought it was a “rule” not to get the bad guys any angrier with you, but apparently it is a rule of war, Geneva Convention or whatever. It does sound like Hornblower giving his parole as a prisoner of the French, but as I recall he, Bush and Seaman Brown killed some French guys in escaping.
Every soldier has a duty to escape whenever possible and to continually resist captured. According to the Laws of War, however, he may not use violence to escape captivity. Guards, in turn, are not allowed to use violence to prevent his escape or recapture him. “Violence” is pretty much accepted to mean “deadly force” or similar.
I forgot to add the caveat that “one always has the right to self defense and to use deadly force in defense of himself or others in danger of death or great bodily harm”. No, trying to justify your use of deadly force in killing a guard to escape because you believe you would have died in the camp is not an automatic defense. If you are in restrained captivity, being held by uniform soldiers who give you medical treatment and mail priviledges and all your other rights outlined in the Geneva Conventions, you probably wouldn’t be able to justify killing a guard to escape.
But, if you are grabbed by unrestrained captors (ie, terrorists and the like) who are obviously not following any rules, you could justify a fear for your life.