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Second Lieutenant Charles “Charlie” Brown was only 21 years old when he piloted his first combat mission as an aircraft commander. On this mission, he would need all the help he could get just to make it back home alive.
He would get that help, but from a very unlikely source. So unlikely, he wasn’t able to talk about it for decades!
On December 20, 1943, Brown gripped the controls of Ye Olde Pub, the name of his B-17 flying fortress, and ascended into the bitterly cold British sky. His crew was headed for Bremen, Germany to destroy a fighter plane factory.
The flight over the North Sea was calm as usual, but when they entered German airspace, resistance became fierce. Flak was so heavy and accurate, that during the bomb run, Ye Olde Pub took hits that shattered the Plexiglas nose, knocked out the number two engine, damaged engine number four, and caused severe damage to the plane’s controls.
The damage was so bad, that coming off target, Lt. Brown was unable to keep pace with the rest of the bomber formation and became a straggler.
Almost immediately, the lone and badly damaged B-17 came under attack from preying BF-109s and FW-190s, the very fighters built in the factory the Americans just bombed. In the hellish 10-minute firefight, number three engine was hit, oxygen, hydraulic, and electrical systems were damaged, and Lt. Brown suffered a bullet fragment to his right shoulder.
With only one engine remaining operational, bailing out or crash-landing looked to be their only hope. But with three members of his crew seriously injured, Brown rejected those options. His only hope was trying to limp back to England. Taking a survey of the sky ahead of him, Brown saw something that stopped his heart: a BF-109 flying right beside him!
But instead of opening up his nose-mounted guns, the German pilot simply waved at him, and then escorted them for miles until they reached the North Sea. At that point, the Luftwaffe pilot saluted, rolled over, and disappeared.
Brown wondered why the German hadn’t shot them down. He’d have to wait decades for an answer.
Eventually, Brown’s B-17 made it across 250 miles of the storm-tossed North Sea and landed at Seething on the English coast. The crew was debriefed on their mission, including the strange encounter with the BF-109. For unknown reasons, the debriefing was classified “secret” and remained so for many years.
After his tour of duty and completion of college, Lt. Brown made a career out of military service before retiring to Miami, Florida. But he never forgot the help given to him by the enemy that cold day in December of 1943.
In 1986, with the thought of the merciful encounter still embedded in his memory, Brown began a search for the anonymous German pilot. After several years of searching, one Franz Stigler responded to notices placed in publications for former German fighter pilots. Recognizing the time, place, and aircraft descriptions, he knew he was the one Brown was searching for.
The two men eventually met, and became good friends.
Through their ongoing talks, Stigler told Brown there were two very good reasons to shoot him down that day. First, he had already downed two bombers that day and needed only one more to earn his nation’s coveted Knight’s Cross. Second, to not shoot down a wounded enemy would have resulted in a court martial, and if convicted, would have led to his execution.
Those thoughts were not lost on the Nazi pilot, but he couldn’t bring himself to open fire on “the most heavily damaged aircraft I ever saw that was still flying.” Seeing the wounded aboard the bomber, he resolved, “I cannot kill these half-dead people. It would be like shooting at a [man in a] parachute.”
Franz Stigler’s act of mercy has been justly, though belatedly, honored by several military organizations around the world.
It’s hard to keep an act of mercy quiet for long.
Resource’s Origin:
When an Enemy Was a Friend by John L. Frisbee. Air Force Magazine, January, 1997.
Topics Illustrated Include:
Compassion
Enemy
Help
Mercy
Military
Solider
War
World War II
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)
