Second Lieutenant Franz Stigler, a former airline pilot, had flown in combat since 1939 both in North Africa and after Germany’s defeat there, in the skies over Europe. He had long since become an “Ace” with over 30 kills against allied aircraft. He flew the German Bf-109, a top line German fighter plane.
Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown, a B-17 pilot, was a farm boy from West Virginia. On 20 December, 1943 he would meet Franz Stigler, though he would not know the German’s name till many years after the war ended.
Charlie left England as part of a fleet of B-17s assigned to the 379th Bomb Group stationed at Kimbolton. Three and a half hours later he had flown over the North Sea and entered Germany. The target was Bremen, where Germany had a factory producing Fw-190 fighter planes. The “Ye Olde Pub” dropped her bombs on target then was hit by concentrated antiaircraft fire. The damage to the Pub was horrific leaving the plane barely flyable.
In the distance, Charlie Brown saw a Bf-109 rapidly approaching to finish them off. The pilot pulled up behind the B-17 and prepared to fire. Then he took a look and could not believe what he was seeing. The bomber should not have been flying. It was shot apart. One engine had quit. Two more appeared to be malfunctioning with one trailing smoke and the other surging erratically.
For the first time in the war, Franz Stigler decided not to shoot down an enemy. He then realized that the bomber’s course would take it over the most concentrated antiaircraft artillery of Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall”. He pulled a hundred yards away and began to escort the bomber.
The artillery commander heard the bomber’s approach and ordered his men to their guns. Through his binoculars he saw a strange sight. He saw a B-17 being escorted by a Bf-109. He knew that Germany had a few B-17s it had recovered from emergency landings or rebuilt from crashes and was using them in secret missions. The Bf-109 escort was proof to him that the bomber was German. He ordered a cease fire.
After making the coast, the German peeled off and headed for home believing that the B-17 would crash into the North Sea. The B-17 made it to England. Many years later the pilots would meet through information printed in American and German aviation magazines. Franz had managed to emigrate to Canada. The two elderly men met in Seattle in 1990. They shook hands then hugged. A few months later, CBS News asked to interview the two men as they attended a reunion of the 379th Bomb Group. After the cameras had stopped, a crowd of more than two dozen people ran to Franz, many with tears in their eyes, some crying. They were the children and grandchildren of Charlie’s crew members who would not have been born had Franz not answered “A Higher Call” in 1943.
For more details – “A Higher Call” by Adam Makos, published in 2013 by The Penguin Group. On the shelf at the Cascade County Library.
Author: Staff
Our Staff account is used to publish submitted content. If you have content that was published under this account, and wish to have your name as author, please contact us at (406) 952-3021
