The
New York Post tells the remarkable story of World War II American bomber pilot Charlie Brown and German Luftwaffe ace Franz Stigler, who instead of shooting down Brown’s crippled plane, flew alongside it and saluted. The story comes from the new book
“A Higher Call,” by Adam Makos and Larry Alexander.
In December 1943, in the skies over Germany, Stigler was in pursuit of Brown’s plane, looking to shoot it down. If he did, it would be his 23rd victory, good enough to earn him the Knight’s Cross, the highest honor for a German soldier in World War II.
But as he approached the plane, Stigler saw that it had no tail guns blinking, no tail-gun compartment remaining, and no left stabilizer. Moving closer, he noticed that the nose of the aircraft was missing. And he could see into the plane, the skin of it having been blown off. Inside, he observed terrified young men tending to their wounded.
Stigler could not shoot the plane down. He had been trained that “honor is everything.” If he surived the war, his superior officer told him, the only way he would be able to live with himself was if he had fought with as much humanity as possible.
