Hector Bassi

December 20, 1943. An American B-17 bomber limps away from a raid on Bremen, Germany, alone and barely flying. A German fighter pilot pulls up right next to it. He has one more kill to earn one of the highest honors in the Luftwaffe. The bomber is helpless. He doesn't fire. The bomber was called Ye Olde Pub. Its pilot was Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown, 21 years old, from West Virginia. It was his first combat mission. It went wrong almost immediately. Flak tore into the plane before it even reached the target. Engines were damaged. It fell out of formation, and once a bomber was alone, German fighters swarmed it. The attacks shredded the B-17. The nose was smashed. Part of the tail was shot away. Most of the guns were knocked out. The tail gunner was killed. Several of the crew were wounded. Brown himself was hit and blacked out as the plane spiraled toward the ground. He came to just in time to pull it out of the dive. Now they were flying low and slow over Germany, trying to get home on what was left of the plane. They passed over a German airfield. On the ground, a pilot named Franz Stigler was refueling his fighter. He was an ace with 22 victories. One more and he'd likely receive the Knight's Cross. He took off to finish the bomber. As he pulled up behind it, he couldn't believe it was still flying. He could see right through the holes in the fuselage. He could see the crew inside, wounded and bleeding. The tail gunner was slumped over his gun, dead. Stigler remembered something his old commander had told him. That if he ever shot a man in a parachute, the commander would shoot him himself. To Stigler, this was the same thing. These men couldn't fight back. So instead of firing, he flew alongside. He tried to signal Brown to land in Germany or head to neutral Sweden. Brown and his crew had no idea what this German was doing. They just stared at him, terrified. So Stigler did something even more dangerous. He stayed right on the bomber's wing as it crossed over the German coast, so the anti-aircraft gunners below would see a German fighter there and hold their fire. Once they were over the sea, Stigler saluted, banked away, and was gone. If anyone had found out, he could have been executed. The B-17 made it across the North Sea and crash landed in England. Brown told his superiors about the German who let them go. He was told to keep quiet. The story was classified. Both men survived the war. Neither ever forgot. Decades later, Charlie Brown started searching for the pilot who spared him. In 1990, he put a notice in a newsletter for former fighter pilots. He got a letter back from Canada. Franz Stigler had moved there after the war. When they met, Stigler described details only someone who had been there could know. They became close friends. They traveled together, spoke at events together, and treated each other like brothers. They died within months of each other in 2008.