Then he saluted him, peeled his fighter away and returned to Germany. (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. 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. You fight by rules to keep your humanity."Īlone with the crippled bomber, Stigler changed his mission. 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. If someone reported him, he would be executed. A German pilot who spared the enemy, though, risked death in Nazi Germany. He could trace his family's ancestry to knights in 16th century Europe. Stigler wasn't just motivated by vengeance that day. He eased his index finger off the trigger. Stigler pressed his hand over the rosary he kept in his flight jacket. Then he nudged his plane alongside the bomber's wings and locked eyes with the pilot whose eyes were wide with shock and horror. He could see men huddled inside the shattered plane tending the wounds of other crewmen. Its skin had been peeled away by shells, its guns knocked out. Stigler craned his neck to examine the rest of the bomber. He was still, his white fleece collar soaked with blood. He climbed behind the sputtering bomber, squinted into his gun sight and placed his hand on the trigger. As the bomber disappeared behind some trees, Stigler tossed his cigarette aside, saluted a ground crewman and took off in pursuit.Īs Stigler's fighter rose to meet the bomber, he decided to attack it from behind. Looking up, he saw a B-17 flying so low it looked like it was going to land. Stigler was standing near his fighter on a German airbase when he heard a bomber's engine. American pilots had killed Stigler's comrades and were bombing his country's cities. His older brother, August, was a fellow Luftwaffe pilot who had been killed earlier in the war. Yet Stigler was driven by something deeper than glory. One more kill and he would win The Knight's Cross, German's highest award for valor. Franz Stigler to jump into his fighter that chilly December day in 1943. Revenge, not honor, is what drove 2nd Lt. What happened next was one of the most remarkable acts of chivalry recorded during World War II.Ĭharles Brown was on his first combat mission during World War II when he met an enemy unlike any other. Instead of pressing the attack, he nodded at Brown and saluted. He stared back at the bomber in amazement and respect. Half his crew was wounded, and the tail gunner was dead, his blood frozen in icicles over the machine guns.īut when Brown and his co-pilot, Spencer "Pinky" Luke, looked at the fighter pilot again, something odd happened. His bomber had been shot to pieces by swarming fighters, and his plane was alone, struggling to stay in the skies above Germany. The B-17 pilot, Charles Brown, was a 21-year-old West Virginia farm boy on his first combat mission. It was five days before Christmas 1943, and the fighter had closed in on their crippled American B-17 bomber for the kill. The men were looking at a gray German Messerschmitt fighter hovering just three feet off their wingtip. "My God, this is a nightmare," the co-pilot said. But his co-pilot stared at the same horrible vision. He blinked hard and looked again, hoping it was just a mirage. The 21-year old American B-17 pilot glanced outside his cockpit and froze.
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