A stricken Allied bomber, the German ace sent to shoot it down and a truly awe inspiring story of wartime chivalry

An amazing story of personal integrity from a German in WWII who refused to shoot down a crippled B-17 because of a higher calling. I hope the book becomes a movie!

Luftwaffe pilot Lt Franz Stigler refused to shoot down near-destroyed Allied bomber
Instead he guided stricken pilot Lt Charlie Brown to safety
A phone call led to a tearful reunion of the two World War II veterans

Franz Stigler

Incredible story: He was a real master of the
skies, but Luftwaffe veteran Franz Stigler showed pity to an Allied
bomber in its hour of need

The lone Allied bomber was a sitting
duck. Holed all over by flak and bullets and down to a single good
engine, it struggled simply to stay in the air over Germany, let alone
make it the 300 miles back to England.

The
rear gunner’s body hung lifeless in his shattered turret, another
gunner was unconscious and bleeding heavily, the rest of the ten-man
crew battered, wounded and in shock. The nose cone had been blown out
and a 200mph gale hurtled through the fuselage.

Somehow the pilot, 20-year-old Lt Charlie Brown, still clung to the controls — and the last vestiges of hope.

He
had already performed miracles. Returning from a daylight bombing run
to Bremen, he had manoeuvred the plane magnificently through a pack of
Messerschmitt fighters, taken hit after hit, then spiraled five miles
down through the air, belching smoke and flames, in an apparent death
dive before somehow levelling her out less than 2,000ft from the ground.

If
common sense prevailed, he would order everyone to bail out and leave
the B-17 Flying Fortress to its fate. He and the crew would parachute to
safety, prisoners of war but alive. But that would mean leaving an
unconscious man behind to die alone, and Brown refused to do that.

Mercifully,
though, he realized as he coaxed the massive plane along at 135mph,
barely above its stalling speed, the German fighters had disappeared.
They must have seen the bomber — part of the U.S. Air Force based in
eastern England — plummeting to earth that day in December, 1943, and
ticked off another kill before returning to base.

There
was a faint chance, then, they might make it home after all, even
though, as his flight engineer now reported after an inspection of the
plane’s blood-spattered interior, ‘we’re chewed to pieces, the
hydraulics are bleeding, the left stabilizer is all but gone and there
are holes in the fuselage big enough to climb through’.

In
the distance, agonisingly close, Brown could see the German coastline,
and ahead of that the North Sea and open skies back to England. Spirits
rose — until a glance behind revealed a fast-moving speck, a lone Me109,
getting bigger and bigger by the second, closing in.

As Stigler came up behind the bomber
he could not believe its condition. How was it still flying? Nor,
strangely, was there any gunfire from the stricken plane to try to ward
him off. That was explained as, inching closer, he saw the slumped body
of the rear gunner.

Veering
alongside, he could see the other guns were out of action too, the
radio room had been blown apart and the nose had gone. Even more
startlingly, through the lattice work of bullet holes, he glimpsed
members of the crew, huddled together, helping their wounded.

He
could make out their ashen faces, their fear and their courage. His
finger eased from the trigger. He just couldn’t do it, he realised.

He
was an experienced fighter pilot. He’d fought the Allies in the skies
over North Africa, Italy and now Germany. This bomber he was cruising
alongside was just one plane out of the countless air armadas that had
been pulverizing his homeland night and day for three years, wiping out
factories and cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

And yet . . .

Stigler was struggling with a dilemma.
He was not content just to ease back and let the bomber escape. He was
now determined to save it and the men on board.

Stigler saw himself as an honorable
man, a knight of the skies — not an assassin. The first time he flew in
combat was with a much admired officer of the old school, who told him,
‘You shoot at a machine, not a man. You score “victories”, not “kills”.

‘A
man may be tempted to fight dirty to survive, but honor is everything.
You follow the rules of war for you, not for your enemy. You fight by
rules to keep your humanity. So you never shoot your enemy if he is
floating down on a parachute. If I ever see you doing that, I will shoot
you down myself.’

The
message hardly chimed with the ruthless Nazi mentality that had gripped
Germany and its armed forces under Hitler. Nor with a war being fought
with such savagery on many fronts.

But
it chimed with Stigler, who had never bought into Nazi philosophy or
joined the party. He prided himself in fighting by this code. It never
mattered more than here and now, flying side by side with a helpless
enemy over northern Germany.