Attacks on parachutists
Such parachutists are considered hors de combat and it is made a war crime to attack them in an interstate armed conflict under Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
The phrase "treated humanely" implies that a person hors de combat must be under physical control to receive protection under Common Article 3.
Also, most of the military manuals cited in the Rule 48 study stems from the context of interstate armed conflict, therefore failing to satisfy the prohibition under customary international humanitarian law (which requires both state practice and opinio juris).
On 31 August 1940, during the Battle of Britain, RAF Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding dined with Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Chequers.
Second Lt. Tadeusz Sawicz, flying nearby, attacked the German plane and another Polish pilot, Wladyslaw Kiedrzynski, spiraled around the defenseless Gabszewicz until he reached the ground.
Apparently, the Luftwaffe pilot was so busy attacking the defenseless Dzwonek that Corporal Jan Malinowski, flying an obsolete P.7 fighter, downed the German plane.
"[12] On 8 March 1944, USAAF Lt. Virgil K. Meroney and his Blue Flight were at the rear of 352d Fighter Group as it reached the end of its escort leg.
Richard "Bud" Peterson, a P-51 pilot with the 357th Fighter Group, based in Leiston, agreed that "normally, nobody, including the Germans, would be shooting anybody in a parachute.
His parachute deployed at the last moment, but did not completely fill, and he was hanging by just the left strap when he hit the ground heavily in a ploughed field and dragged into a barbed wire fence.
I immediately pull my ripcord – the chute opens – I am just over some woods, see a Mustang flying towards me, it shoots at me.I have arrived in the tops of some trees and finally hang suspended between the branches.
[19] Thaen Kwock Lee was a B-17 waist gunner with the 483rd Bomb Group, a 15th Air Force unit, when his aircraft was shot down by German Me 262s on 22 March 1945.
Robert O' Nan of the 487th Fighter Squadron did this on 10 April 1944, after forcing a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 pilot to abandon his aircraft: "I followed the plane down where it crashed, exploded, and burned up, in the middle of a plowed field.
[21] U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, felt compelled to specifically forbid the practice.
John Huang Xinrui tried fighting off the Japanese pilots taking turns shooting at Lt. Liu, but was shot down and had to bail out himself; he waited until the last possible moment to tug his parachute cord.
In July 1938, one Russian volunteer, Valentin Dudonov, bailed out in his parachute and landed on a sand bank in Lake Poyang after a collision with an IJNAS A5M aircraft.
On 23 December 1941, 12 P-40 pilots of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) Flying Tigers intercepted 54 Japanese bombers escorted by 20 pursuit planes, who were bombing the city of Rangoon in Burma.
Tadayoshi Koga, a 19-year-old flight petty officer first class, was launched from the Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō as part of the 4 June raid.
Koga and his comrades attacked Dutch Harbor, shooting down an American PBY-5A Catalina flying boat piloted by Bud Mitchell and strafing its survivors in the water.
A concerted and immediate growl of rage rose from most of us, conveying our feelings that the Japanese pilots had just perpetrated an act amounting to unfair tactics, treachery, and an outrageous course of conduct.
This was later justified on the grounds that rescued servicemen would have been rapidly landed at their military destination and promptly returned to active service, as well as being retaliation for the Japanese fighter planes attacking survivors of the downed B-17 bomber.
[35][36][37][38][39] On 5 May 1945, an American Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber was flying with a dozen other aircraft after bombing Tachiarai Air Base in southwestern Japan, beginning the return flight to Guam.
[41] German civilians on the ground reported that two British airmen bailed out from the doomed aircraft, only to be strafed and killed by one of the Soviet MiG 15s in the 1953 Avro Lincoln shootdown incident.
Most notably, such events occurred during the peak of Operation Rolling Thunder, where many pilots recalled being shot at with small arms fire, presumably from Type 56 assault rifles.
[42] Pilots who made it through the small arms fire were often captured and sent to POW camps, most notably, Hỏa Lò Prison AKA the "Hanoi Hilton", where they faced extreme punishment and torture.
[42] During pitched aerial battles between fighter pilots of the Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF) and those of the USAF and USN on 10 May 1972, the second day of the almost-six month long Operation Linebacker air interdiction campaign against North Vietnam, four MiG-17s from the 923rd Fighter Regiment were flying in defense of bridges at Hải Dương which were being attacked by a strike-force of A-6 Intruders, A-7 Corsairs IIs and F-4 Phantom IIs.
MiG-17 pilot Do Hang was shot down by AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles fired from Lt. Duke Cunningham's (and his RIO Lt.jg Willy Driscoll) F-4 in the ensuing air battle, and while successfully ejecting from his stricken MiG-17, Do Hang was then killed by 20mm gunfire from American fighter aircraft making strafing passes at him while descending underneath his parachute; two more MiG-17s were shot-down by the F-4s of Lt. Cunningham and Lt. Connelly (pilots Nguyen Van Tho and Tra Van Kiem both KIA), while the MiG-17 piloted by Ta Ding Trung, who pursued the A-7s, out to sea, but was unable to score any hits, was able to return to base and survive the battle.
[43] MiG-21s from the 927th Fighter Regiment arrived moments later, directed by ground control intercept command (GCI) towards the F-4s now at about 10km north of Hải Dương; R-3S "Atoll" missiles fired from Vu Duc Hop's and Le Thanh Dao's MiG-21s found their mark against the F-4s of Cunningham/Driscoll and Blackburn/Rudloff respectively, and while Cunningham/Driscoll were able eject out at sea and be rescued (with pilot Cunningham famously fabricating the "Colonel Toon" tale in aftermath), Blackburn/Rudloff were seen to have both ejected and their parachutes going down over land, but only Lt. Rudloff was ever manifested on the POW list by North Vietnamese records.
[49] VPAF MiG-21 ace fighter pilot Le Thanh Dao would fly his final mission against U.S. aircraft on 15 October, 1972 when he was shot down by USAF F-4E Phantoms, and while safely ejecting from his stricken MiG, at least one Phantom fired cannon shells at him underneath his parachute, puncturing holes into his parachute, causing a high-rate of descent which upon landing, broken both his legs and his vertebra; Le Thanh Dao would spend over a year recovering from the injuries before returning to flight duty.
On 24 November 2015, a Russian Su-24 attack jet was shot down by a Turkish F-16C, and the two pilots ejected within Syrian territory controlled by Turkmen rebels.
A commander of the Syrian Turkmen Brigades told Reuters that his forces opened fire on a pilot parachuting from the downed aircraft while attempting to land in non-rebel territory, and the group uploaded an image of rebel soldiers holding flaps of a NPP Zvezda K-36 ejection seat.
