Q Ships

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by Targan

Not all. Just the bastards involved in allowing the pride of the Australian fleet to pull alongside for a routine cargo check of a freighter only to have it suddenly uncover hidden gun turrets and torpedo tubes, run up a German flag and rake the Sydney from end to end. For that war crime yes, I'd kill the whole gwerman crew. And not shed a single tear for them.

And as you well know, "I was just following orders" is not an acceptable defence in a war crimes trial. Is not and should not be. Even in basic training I had sufficient explanations given to me to know an illegal order when I hear it.

The resistance fighters in Europe and Asia that were out of uniform but still making attacks ?
The crews of British and American bomberplanes that openly followed the strategy of bombing enemy civillians en masse to terrorize the enemy population to give in ?
Or even the use of nuclear weapons ?

All easily defined as major war crimes by standards that were apllied then as today .

I believe the Q-ships are a British denomination actually -they had several -albeit not as clever or succesful as the Germans.Then again there was more allied shipping to attack.. The Germans called them merchant raiders /Hilfskreuser or some such .

Anyways -had I lived back then or had relatives onboard I would have probably chimed in with you targan-but as I live blessedly far removed from such things I take another -the opposite stand .

(My party is condemned to death in absentia by MilGov for warcrimes etc ..they figure on MilGovs deck of villain cards as the most wanted rebel/bandit leaders in the CONUS.hehe They even compete to "improve "their ranking some times ..anyways -thats neither here nor there )