Lot of noise being made about Purple Hearts

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message ...
In message , Fred the
Red Shirt writes
(BUFDRVR) wrote in message
...
Wrong. The French were using larger than .50 calibre weapons against
troops in
SE Asia a decade before Ed began straffing troops there.

I'll take your word for that. What ammo was used?

20mm HE from Bearcats, at the very least.

Explosive rounds with a [explosive, FF] mass under a certain limit
(Hague or St. Petersburg, can't recall offhand): technical war crime.

St Petersburg was the first such prohibition though the US Army
decided, as a matter of policy, to eschew them as well for the
same reasons, they exacerbated the injuries to men who would
have been disabled by the plain ammunition of the day.

The mass limit was 400 gms, approximately the mass of a 37 mm
cannon.

http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1914m/gene68.html

My previous statement about the St Pete not being reciprocal was
incorrect, though there is a tendency for alleged crimes to be
tried according to the laws of the nations holding the trial,
regardless of what laws were accepted by the defendant's nation.
Entirely justified, IMHO, so long as it is the decision makers
and not the soldiers in the field who are on trial.

(One of those
ignored issues because everyone found 20mm+ cannon so useful for
shooting at "stuff" and therefore also fired them at people _outside_
trucks, trains, cars, tanks, ships etc.)

It appears that the Prohibition was observed without controversy
from 1868 until WWI when the British began using incindiery (also
banned) ammunition in their aircraft. The Germans protested, but
then withdrew their protest apparently decided they preferred
to use the same themselves.

It would seem that tracers are also banned, but it is hard to
imagine a .50 cal tracer exacerbating injuries to a person,
compared to .50 cal hardball. Is there a difference, historically,
between ammuniton designated as tracer and that designated as
incindiery?


... It appears to have been gently allowed to
fall into abeyance, like only-recently-rescinded laws about it being
legal to shoot Welshmen with bow and arrow in certain British towns
after the hours of darkness, when everyone discovered how useful 20mm
cannon were.

So the British have discovered that the 20mm is useful for shooting
Welshmen after dark?


But more relevant, there is no reason at all why firing ball rounds from
a .50 machine gun at enemy combatants should be less than lawful.
There's a persistent myth that it's illegal to fire .50" at people, and
it just isn't true.

Agreed. The only basis I can find for that myth is the St Petersburg
(and subsequent) declarations, coupled with the assumption that the
ammunition is incindiery or explosive. I found one Usenet article
by a Norwegian named Per who said the standard ammuniton for a
12.7 mm HMG in Norway was HE, and intended for use against helicopters.


It might be possible to claim that firing 'explosive bullets' of under
the proscribed weight is a war crime, which would make every 20mm
strafing run an atrocity: but by the time of Vietnam this fell into
"long-accepted custom" with every nation that could strafe troops having
done so with 20-23mm cannon.


IMHO the prohibition became unworkable as soon as it became lawful
to issue weapons with the previously proscribed ammunition for
any purpose. You simply cannot expect a soldier in combat to
decline to use any weapon at his disposal.

....

Mr Rasimus, in another ng, says that he is unaware that explosive
ammunition has ever been used in .50 cal. Here and there over the
years I have seen references to explosive .50 cal or 12.7 mm ammuntion.
What is the history here?


--

FF