THE REST OF THE STORY
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.
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Brown's Crippled B-17 Stalked by Stigler's ME-109
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.
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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.
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't 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.
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Luftwaffe Major Franz Stigler
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.
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Charles Brown, with his wife, Jackie (left), with Franz
Stigler, with his wife, Hiya.
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 plane, 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 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."
The two pilots would meet again, but this time in person,
in the lobby of a Florida hotel. 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.
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They met as enemies but Franz Stigler, on left, and
Charles Brown, ended up as fishing buddies.
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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