B-17F Ye Olde Pub

B-17F Ye Olde Pub

Franz Stigler

2nd. Lt. Charlie Brown

STRANGE BUT TRUE

A B-17 'Ye Old Pub' damaged on a bombing raid over Germany reached England safely after a German pilot declined to shoot it down.

Charlie Brown was a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot with the 379th Bomber Group at Kimbolton, England. His B-17 was called 'Ye Old Pub' and was in a terrible state, having been hit by flak and fighters. The compass was damaged and they were flying deeper over enemy territory instead of heading home to Kimbolton.

After flying over an enemy airfield, a pilot named Franz Stigler was ordered to take off and shoot down the B-17. When he got near the B-17, he could not believe his eyes. In his words, he 'had never seen a plane in such a bad state'. The tail and rear section was severely damaged, and the tail gunner wounded. The top gunner was all over the top of the fuselage. The nose was smashed and there were holes everywhere.

Despite having ammunition, Franz flew his Messerschmitt 109 to the side of the B-17 and looked at Charlie Brown, the pilot. Brown was scared and struggling to control his damaged and blood-stained plane. Aware that they had no idea where they were going,

Franz waved at Charlie to turn 180 degrees. Franz escorted and guided the stricken plane to and slightly over the North Sea towards England. He then saluted Charlie Brown and turned away, back to Europe. When Franz landed he told the c/o that the plane had been shot down over the sea, and never told the truth to anybody.

Charlie Brown and the remains of his crew told all at their briefing, but were ordered never to talk about it. 

But the episode of the German who refused to attack a beaten foe haunted him. He was determined to find the enemy pilot who spared him and his crew. He wrote numerous letters of inquiry to German military sources, with little success. Finally, a notice in a newsletter for former Luftwaffe pilots elicited a response from Franz Stigler, a German fighter ace credited with destroying more than two dozen Allied planes. He, it turned out, was the angel of mercy in the skies over Germany on that fateful day just before Christmas 1943.

It had taken 46 years, but in 1989 Brown found the mysterious man in the ME-109. Careful questioning of Stigler about details of the incident removed any doubt. Stigler, now 80, had emigrated to Canada and was living near Vancouver. After an exchange of letters, Brown flew there for a reunion. The two men have visited each other frequently since that time and have appeared jointly before Canadian and American military audiences.

The most recent appearance was at the annual Air Force Ball in Miami in September 1995, where the former foes were honored. In his first letter to Brown, Stigler had written: All these years, I wondered what happened to the B-17, did she make it or not She made it, just barely. But why did the German not destroy his virtually defenseless enemy I didn't have the heart to finish off those brave men, Stigler later said. I flew beside them for a long time. They were trying desperately to get home and I was going to let them do it. I could not have shot at them. It would have been the same as shooting at a man in a parachute. Franz Stigler passed away on 22 March 2008.