This story is told
in the book, A Higher Call, which is available
through Amazon.
Brown's Crippled B-17 Stalked by Stigler's ME-109
The 21-year old American B-17 pilot glanced outside his cockpit and
froze. He blinked hard and looked again, hoping it was just a mirage. But his
co-pilot stared at the same horrible vision. "My God, this is a
nightmare," the co-pilot said. "He's going to destroy us," the
pilot agreed.
The men were looking at a gray German Messerschmitt fighter
hovering just three feet off their wingtip. It was five days before Christmas
1943, and the fighter had closed in on their crippled American B-17 bomber for
the kill.
The B-17 pilot, Charles Brown, was a 21-year-old West Virginia farm
boy on his first combat mission. His bomber had been shot to pieces by swarming
fighters, and his plane was alone, struggling to stay in the skies above
Germany . Half his crew was wounded, and the tail gunner was dead, his blood
frozen in icicles over the machine guns.
But when Brown and his co-pilot, Spencer "Pinky" Luke,
looked at the fighter pilot again, something odd happened. The German didn't
pull the trigger. He stared back at the bomber in amazement and respect.
Instead of pressing the attack, he nodded at Brown and saluted. What happened
next was one of the most remarkable acts of chivalry recorded during World War
II.
USAAF Lt. Charles
Brown
Charles Brown was on his first combat mission during World War II
when he met an enemy unlike any other.
Revenge, not honor, is what drove 2nd Lt. Franz Stigler to jump
into his fighter that chilly December day in 1943. Stigler wasn't just any
fighter pilot. He was an ace. One more kill and he would win The Knight's
Cross, German's highest award for valor.
Yet Stigler was driven by something deeper than glory. His older
brother, August, was a fellow Luftwaffe pilot who had been killed earlier in
the war. American pilots had killed Stigler's comrades and were bombing his
country's cities.Stigler was standing near his fighter on a German airbase when
he heard a bomber's engine. Looking up, he saw a B-17 flying so low it looked
like it was going to land. As the bomber disappeared behind some trees, Stigler
tossed his cigarette aside, saluted a ground crewman and took off in pursuit.
Luftwaffe Major Franz Stigler
As Stigler's fighter rose
to meet the bomber, he decided to attack it from behind. He climbed behind the
sputtering bomber, squinted into his gun sight and placed his hand on the
trigger. He was about to fire when he hesitated. Stigler was baffled. No one in
the bomber fired at him.
He looked closer at the
tail gunner. He was still, his white fleece collar soaked with blood. Stigler
craned his neck to examine the rest of the bomber. Its skin had been peeled
away by shells, its guns knocked out. One propeller wasn' turning. Smoke
trailed from another engine. He could see men huddled inside the shattered
plane tending the wounds of other crewmen.
Then he nudged his plane
alongside the bomber's wings and locked eyes with the pilot whose eyes were
wide with shock and horror.
Stigler pressed his hand
over the rosary he kept in his flight jacket. He eased his index finger off the
trigger. He couldn't shoot. It would be murder.
Stigler wasn't just
motivated by vengeance that day. He also lived by a code. He could trace his
family's ancestry to knights in 16th century Europe . He had once studied to be
a priest. A German pilot who spared the enemy, though, risked death in Nazi Germany.
If someone reported him, he would be executed.
Yet Stigler could also
hear the voice of his commanding officer, who once told him: "You follow
the rules of war for you -- not your enemy. You fight by rules to keep your
humanity."
Alone with the crippled
bomber, Stigler changed his mission. He nodded at the American pilot and began
flying in formation so German anti-aircraft gunners on the ground wouldn't
shoot down the slow-moving bomber. (The Luftwaffe had B-17s of its own, shot
down and rebuilt for secret missions and training.) Stigler escorted the bomber
over the North Sea and took one last look at the American pilot. Then he
saluted him, peeled his fighter away and returned to Germany .
"Good luck,"
Stigler said to himself. "You're in God's hands now..." Franz Stigler
didn't think the big B-17 could make it back to England and wondered for years
what happened to the American pilot and crew he encountered in combat.
As he watched the German
fighter peel away that December day, 2nd Lt. Charles Brown wasn't thinking of
the philosophical connection between enemies. He was thinking of survival. He
flew his crippled plan, filled with wounded, back to his base in England and
landed with one of four engines knocked out, one failing and barely any fuel
left. After his bomber came to a stop, he leaned back in his chair and put a
hand over a pocket Bible he kept in his flight jacket. Then he sat in silence.
Brown flew more missions
before the war ended. Life moved on. He got married, had two daughters,
supervised foreign aid for the U.S. State Department during the Vietnam War and
eventually retired to Florida .
Late in life, though, the
encounter with the German pilot began to gnaw at him. He started having
nightmares, but in his dream there would be no act of mercy. He would awaken
just before his bomber crashed.
Brown took on a new
mission. He had to find that German pilot. Who was he? Why did he save my life?
He scoured military archives in the U.S. and England . He attended a pilots'
reunion and shared his story. He finally placed an ad in a German newsletter
for former Luftwaffe pilots, retelling the story and asking if anyone knew the
pilot.
On January 18, 1990,
Brown received a letter. He opened it and read: "Dear Charles, All these
years I wondered what happened to that B-17, did she make it home? Did her crew
survive their wounds? To hear of your survival has filled me with indescribable
joy..."
It was Stigler.
He had had left Germany
after the war and moved to Vancouver , British Columbia , in 1953. He became a
prosperous businessman. Now retired, Stigler told Brown that he would be in
Florida come summer and "it sure would be nice to talk about our
encounter." Brown was so excited, though, that he couldn't wait to see
Stigler. He called directory assistance for Vancouver and asked whether there
was a number for a Franz Stigler. He dialed the number, and Stigler picked up.
"My God, it's
you!" Brown shouted as tears ran down his cheeks. Brown had to do more. He
wrote a letter to Stigler in which he said: "To say THANK YOU, THANK YOU,
THANK YOU on behalf of my surviving crewmembers and their families appears
totally inadequate."
Charles Brown, with his wife, Jackie (left), with
Franz Stigler, with his wife, Hiya.
One of Brown's friends
was there to record the summer reunion. Both men looked like retired
businessmen: they were plump, sporting neat ties and formal shirts. They fell
into each other' arms and wept and laughed. They talked about their encounter
in a light, jovial tone.
The mood then changed.
Someone asked Stigler what he thought about Brown. Stigler sighed and his
square jaw tightened. He began to fight back tears before he said in heavily
accented English: "I love you, Charlie."
Stigler had lost his
brother, his friends and his country. He was virtually exiled by his countrymen
after the war. There were 28,000 pilots who fought for the German air force.
Only 1,200 survived.
The war cost him
everything. Charlie Brown was the only good thing that came out of World War II
for Franz. It was the one thing he could be proud of. The meeting helped Brown
as well, says his oldest daughter, Dawn Warner.
Brown and Stigler became
pals. They would take fishing trips
together. They would fly cross-country to each other homes and take road trips together
to share their story at schools and veterans' reunions. Their wives, Jackie
Brown and Hiya Stigler, became friends.
Brown's daughter says her
father would worry about Stigler's health and constantly check in on him.
"It wasn't just for
show," she says. "They really did feel for each other. They talked
about once a week." As his friendship with Stigler deepened, something
else happened to her father, Warner says "The nightmares went away."
Brown had written a
letter of thanks to Stigler, but one day, he showed the extent of his
gratitude. He organized a reunion of his surviving crew members, along with
their extended families. He invited Stigler as a guest of honor.
During the reunion, a
video was played showing all the faces of the people that now lived --
children, grandchildren, relatives -- because of Stigler's act of chivalry.
Stigler watched the film from his seat of honor.
"Everybody was
crying, not just him," Warner says.
Stigler and Brown died
within months of each other in 2008. Stigler was 92, and Brown was 87. They had
started off as enemies, became friends, and then something more.
After he died, Warner was
searching through Brown's library when
she
came across a book on German fighter jets. Stigler had given the book to Brown.
Both were country boys who loved to read about planes.
Warner opened the book
and saw an inscription Stigler had written to Brown:
In 1940, I lost my only
brother as a night fighter. On the 20th of December,
4 days before Christmas,
I had the chance to save a B-17 from her destruction,
a plane so badly damaged
it was a wonder that she was still flying.
The pilot, Charlie Brown,
is for me as precious as my brother was.
Thanks Charlie.
Your Brother, Franz
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