Hi FB,
Just noticed this one when it popped up to the top of the board. Sorry for not answering earlier.
So, let's look at 3.3.3;
When shooting into a Fight (other than with group targeting weapons such as the flamethrower and machine gun), roll an attack at a penalty of -4 (in addition to any other adjustments). If the result is a hit, the intended target has been hit. If the result is a miss (but not a natural 1), determine randomly which figure has been targeted, then roll a fresh attack against that target without the -4 modifier. If this second roll
also misses then the shot has missed the group completely.You are correct, the word 'into' is the key one. Also the very next section covers shooting while in a fight, in which no such penalties are described and the Napier example is situated.
One of the restrictions we had in writing these rules was there was a very strict word count given to us by Osprey, who commissioned us to write them. Thus with just 25,000 we had to be very spare with our language, so every word counted.
In later versions of these rules we abandoned this and went for a random target rule instead as fights tend to be fast moving and chaotic. This is often very amusing