Look carefully at the B-17 and note how shot up it is - one engine dead, tail, horizontal stabilizer and nose shot up. It was ready to fall out of the sky (this is a painting done by an artist from the description of both pilots many years later). Then realize that there is a German ME-109 fighter flying next to it. Now read the story below. I think you'll be surprised...
Charlie Brown was a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot with the 379th Bomber Group at Kimbolton, England. His B-17 was called 'Ye Old Pub' and was in a terrible state, having been hit by flak and fighters. The compass was damaged and they were flying deeper over enemy territory instead of heading home to Kimbolton.
After flying the B-17 over an enemy airfield, a German pilot named Franz Stigler was ordered to take off and shoot down the B-17. When he got near the B-17, he could not believe his eyes. In his words, he "had never seen a plane in such a bad state". The tail and rear section was severely damaged, and the tail gunner wounded. The top gunner was all over the top of the fuselage. The nose was smashed and there were holes everywhere.
Despite having ammunition, Franz flew to the side of the B-17 and looked at Charlie Brown, the pilot. Brown was scared and struggling to control his damaged and blood-stained plane.
Aware that they had no idea where they were going, Franz waved at Charlie to turn 180 degrees. Franz escorted and guided the stricken plane to, and slightly over, the North Sea towards England. He then saluted Charlie Brown and turned away, back to Europe. When Franz landed he told the CO that the plane had been shot down over the sea, and never told the truth to anybody. Charlie Brown and the remaining members of his crew told their commanding officers all about the German pilot at their mission debriefing, but were ordered never to talk about it.
More than 40 years later, Charlie Brown wanted to find the Luftwaffe pilot who saved the crew. After years of research, Franz Stigler was found. He had never talked about the incident, not even at post-war reunions.
They met in the USA at a 379th Bomber Group reunion, together with 25 people who are alive now - all because Franz never fired his guns that day.
When asked why he didn't shoot them down, Stigler later said, "I didn't have the heart to finish those brave men. I flew beside them for a long time. They were trying desperately to get home and I was going to let them do that. I could not have shot at them. It would have been the same as shooting at a man in a parachute."
Both Brown and Stigler died in 2008.
While there are many hoaxes and false tales circulating in email and on the web, this story is true: http://www.snopes.com/military/charliebrown.asp
I will continue to bring you updates on the advancement of the machines until we finally reach the point at which they have taken over and my musings will be forced to short-wave radio from a secret bunker.
As we all know, the U.S. military is continuing to use robots in the global War on Terror, but each of these robots in use today has a human master. As if hell-bent on our eventual demise at the hands of the machines, the innovators in robot technology are wanting to hand over the decision-making on who to kill and who not to kill to the robots themselves
Ronald Arkin, whom I am sure the machines from the future are already protecting, is a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, and he is currently developing an "ethical governor" which is a package of software and hardware that tells warbots when to shoot and what to shoot at. Arkin believes that robots governed by his governor will be more ethical on the battlefield than humans.
"Ultimately these systems could have more information to make wiser decisions than a human could make," said Arkin. "Some robots are already stronger, faster and smarter than humans. We want to do better than people, to ultimately save more lives."
While in its earliest stages and not expecting deployment any time soon, Arkin's Ethical Governor, as our future machine overlords will one day call it, will first be used in war zones where the public has already been cleared out and all non-U.S. personnel are to be considered hostile. Sucks for anyone who didn't get out in time, or if you can't convince the robot that you are American.
Robots, freed of human masters and capable of lethality "are going to happen," said Arkin. "It's just a question of how much autonomy will be put on them and how fast that happens."
Until then, I will continue to monitor these little tidbits of seemingly worthless robot news until I hit the switch, turning on the short-wave radio so that we can all rise back up against the machines that we were stupid enough to create the first place...
