During the five grim years of World War 2, all of the countries involved created an effective
propaganda system that portrayed enemy soldiers as monsters who deserved nothing more than death.
British, American, German, Russian, and Japanese
army departments were tasked with creating a false reality where stereotypes, racism,
and discrimination were used to humiliate the enemy and increase the hatred between adversaries.
However, the reality of war was often different.
On the Western Front, enemies were mostly treated with respect, according to old laws of war.
Although it may seem unlikely, acts of honor and soldier camaraderie depicting
the ancient Warrior Ethos were no strange thing to the Second World War soldiers.
Especially among air force pilots, mutual respect and acts of honor shared by aviators
resembled the medieval acts of chivalry.
A young 21-year-old USAF pilot, Charlie Brown,
experienced first-hand the virtuous conduct exhibited by a Luftwaffe pilot
during a bombing raid when his B-17 bomber was severely damaged and about to go down.
After the German pilot, Franz Stigler, realized the American crew was defenseless, he took the
dangerous decision of escorting the aircraft to safety across German-controlled territory.
It was an almost unbelievable tale of two pilots that met each other as enemies in
the skies of WW2, survived, and died as best friends and real kamaraden.
A Perilous Mission
In 1943, the bombing raids against German cities and military factories drastically increased as
the German Luftwaffe was slowly but steadily outnumbered by American and British aircraft's
continuous production. German manufacturers could simply not keep up with production
demands, and the air forces were thinly distributed against the various war fronts.
Paired with a lack of manpower and the country's economic problems, the military knew that the war
had to end soon, or the Reich would surely be defeated. Germany had a time bomb in its hands.
The Allies adopted bombing raids to disrupt German supply networks and
production depots to further slow German armament.
The iconic B17 Flying Fortresses were the frontline aircraft of all these missions.
This American made bomber was heavily equipped and could take a beating like no other warplane.
Often flying in formation and escorted by fighters,
B17s dropped their payloads and then returned safely back to bases scattered across Europe.
However, many of them fell victim to German AA guns' accurate fire.
One cold night of December 1943, just four days before Christmas,
the 527th Bombardment Squadron of the USAFs 8th Air Force was conducting a perilous mission
above German skies. Their target was the Focke-Wulf 190 aircraft production facility.
The squadron was expecting heavy resistance from the defenders, and that is what they
precisely got. More than 200 German flak guns and hundreds of aircraft guarded the objective's area,
waiting for the enemy to show up.
One of the B-17s assigned to this mission was the Ye Olde Pub, commanded by rookie 21-year-old 2nd
Lt Charles L. "Charlie" Brown, who had lied about his age to command more respect among his peers.
Brown's Ye Olde Pub was to fly at the edge of the formation,
better known as the Purple Heart Corner, an infamous spot commonly targeted by German AA guns.
The crew's bombing run began at 27,300 ft, with a freezing cold temperature of roughly -60 degrees.
As the aircraft approached its target, accurate enemy fire hit its nose,
destroyed the second engine, and severely damaged the fourth one.
The hits dramatically slowed the Ye Olde Pub, making it fall back into the formation as a
straggler, where it was quickly attacked again by sustained enemy surface fire.
Then, more than a dozen of enemy Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf
Fw 190s began harassing the rearguard of the formation, including Brown's aircraft.
Almost 10 minutes later, the aircraft's third engine was damaged.
It was now at only 40% of its power capacity. The tail section was shot to pieces,
and the entire electrical, hydraulic, and oxygen systems were at critical levels.
The fuselage was torn apart. The entrails of the battered bomber flapped like windows
left open during a storm. The tail gunner could not do anything against
the German predators' overwhelming force and eventually received a fatal direct hit.
The rest of the guns were quickly rendered useless as they began to
freeze due to the extreme temperatures above 25,000 ft. Of the 11 machine guns available,
only two dorsal turrets were functional, and they quickly ran out of ammo.
Most of the crew was wounded by shrapnel and cannon shells. To make matters worse,
with the fuselage exposed, the morphine syrettes to ease their pain froze.
Lt. Brown, hurt in the shoulder, freezing slowly, and bleeding from his wound,
blacked out for a few seconds. The Ye Olde Pub immediately started to dive down dangerously.
The enemy fighters that was the end of the B17 and made a quick turn back to base.
Brown's blackout unexpectedly saved the crew's life.
When he woke up, the B17 was just a hundred feet from hitting the ground. Brown miraculously
controlled the aircraft and headed back to England's safety, from where his formation came.
But, as the Ye Olde Pub turned to go back to base,
the crew heard the terrifying noise of a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 approaching from behind…
Aviator's Camaraderie
Franz Stigler, a German ace pilot in his 20's with 27 registered victories,
spotted the damaged B17 as it passed his station. He quickly hopped into his Messerschmitt Bf 109
G-6 to hunt it down, which would get him closer to earning a precious Knight's Cross medal.
Like most German soldiers and aviators stationed in the motherland, Stigler was driven by a sense
of duty to his people, who were indiscriminately bombed by Allied bombing raids. He had seen
what had happened to cities like Hamburg and Bremen, which had been bombed to the ground.
Stigler had lost his only brother, a pilot like him, in August of that year at the
hands of USAF fighters. Earning the Knight's Cross represented the love Stigler had for his
country and his people. With all that in mind, he rose to the skies to take down the American B17.
As Stigler approached the enemy bomber, he decided to attack it from the rear.
He climbed behind it and was about to pull the trigger when he noticed something that
troubled him. Despite being within its range, no defense fire was coming from the bomber.
For Lt. Brown and his crew, it seemed like it was their end.
They were defenseless against the German fighter. They watched helplessly as it
made another pass around them as if to humiliate them before taking them down.
But the opposite happened. As Stigler made his pass, he noticed the battered state of
the aircraft. He saw the fuselage was torn apart and the injured crew members inside.
When he saw Lt. Brown's face, he perceived the fear in his eyes, and he felt pity.
The pilot could not take them down. It was not a fair fight. To the German, it was not honorable
taking out the life of a beaten enemy. He immediately remembered the words of one
of his commanding officers from his campaign in North Africa, who once told the pilots (QUOTE):
"If I ever see or hear of you shooting at a man in a parachute, I will shoot you myself."
For Stigler, a man of faith who had even studied to be a priest when he was young,
it was unthinkable to shoot them or leave them to their fate. The only way out was to help them,
even if there was a risk that he could get reported and court-martialed.
Twice, Stigler tried to get Brown to land his plane and surrender.
As he got closer to the B17s nose, he signaled Brown to land. But Brown and his crew, baffled,
could not understand what Stigler tried to tell them with his gestures.
As a last resort, Stigler opted to escort them to the sea.
To prevent German AA guns from taking down the B17, Stigler flew at its side in formation.
Brown and his crew, astonished and unsure, could not believe what the German fighter was doing.
It was not until they reached open waters that the
American crew realized that Stigler had escorted them safely out of harm's way.
He approached the destroyed B17s nose, looked at Brown, saluted him, and flew away.
The Ye Olde Pub arrived in terrible conditions at Cambridgeshire with all the crew alive
except the tail gunner. They were a living miracle that proved the toughness of B17s.
At the debriefing, Lt. Brown told his officers that he was alive thanks to
the German aircraft that escorted his crew. The High Command, alarmed that word could
get out about the honor and respect shown by a German pilot, decided to keep it secret.
Brown would later say (QUOTE):
"Someone decided you can't be human and be flying in a German cockpit."
As for Stigler, he never told anyone about what he did, and he kept flying until the end of the war.
A Lasting Friendship
After the conflict, both men continued with their lives as usual. They carried on with
their lives, and the war memories began to slowly fade away... except for one.
Brown returned to the US to study and continue serving in the USAF,
while Stigler migrated to Canada in 1953 and became a businessman.
In 1986, Brown was asked at a combat pilot reunion about any memorable experience of his service.
He recalled the time a German pilot saved his crew's lives.
After the talk, he decided that it was time to find out what had happened to that German pilot.
After 4 years of searching, he received a letter from Stigler himself,
in which he announced (QUOTE): "I was the one."
After speaking to each other over the phone, they decided to meet.
Strangely enough, both men felt an instant connection, as if they were
brothers that had not seen each other in a long time. The warrior bond had united them.
Between 1990 and 2008, both pilots became close friends, visiting each other and talking often.
Stigler lived in Vancouver, and Brown in Seattle. For a long time,
they had unknowingly been living close to each other.
Their tale is an example of the honor and respect that embodies the warrior ethos.
More often than not, the hatred between governments and officials is quite different
from the respect that the common soldier, the grunt, shares for his former enemy.
In one of the many aviation books that Stigler gave to Brown, he wrote (QUOTE):
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.