It was remembrance Sunday this week so we’ve decided to feature one of the articles from our full magazines. This is the incredibly true story of two enemy planes during World War 2, their encounter and the 40 year search for ‘The Good German’. Click below to see the article as it appeared in the magazine or keep scrolling for a text only version.
The Good German – How I met my Enemy
The Good German – How I met my enemy: Text only version
War often brings out the very worst of people and there are countless harrowing examples of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. However, on very rare occasions we hear of an event that restores hope in mankind and shows that some people can rise above the brutality of war.
When American pilot Lt Charlie Brown and German flier Lt Franz Stigler flew into the same patch of sky over occupied Europe, the outcome was far from predictable. Their story shows that even in conflict, we don’t have to forego our sense of right and wrong.
The American B-17 was called ‘The Flying Fortress’ and when their pilots flew in their tight formations their combined firepower provided protection against all but the most determined attackers.
While British bombers carried out night raids that blanket bombed German targets, the B-17’s flew their missions in daylight. The Americans were trying to focus their attacks on high value military targets which couldn’t be easily identified at night.
While it is true that the Americans achieved more accurate or effective results from their attacks, flying in daylight was not without its risks. American losses were far in excess of those suffered by their British allies, both in terms of men and machines.
In December 1943 a squadron of US B-17 Flying Fortresses were headed home after a daylight bombing raid over Bremen in Germany. During the attack they had come under heavy fire.
Lt Charlie Brown was then just twenty years old and his plane had been ambushed by a pack of deadly Messerschmidt fighters and taken heavy fire.
Despite the extensive damage, the young pilot somehow slipped the ambush and managed to level the stricken plane out. But he was forced to fly at a precariously low 2,000ft.
Soon afterwards the flight engineer delivered his damage report which included bleeding hydraulics, broken and missing flaps and holes in the fuselage that were big enough to climb through.
Aside from the damage to the plane itself, the crew had also suffered injuries. The tail-gunner had been very seriously injured.
But protocol told Brown that he should still order the craft to be abandoned. His job was to protect the crew , even if that meant sacrificing one man in order to ensure that the rest could survive. Brown’s standing orders would have been to parachute out with the remaining able-bodied men and hope that they would run into allies on the ground before German soldiers could track them down. But Lt Brown simply would not leave an unconscious crewman to die alone. His crew agreed that if one man stayed, all would stay. Brown and his crew fought to stay in the air.
Given the planes condition, and travelling at a slow 135mph, they were barely above the plane’s stalling speed. The men must have counted their blessings when they saw the German coastline ahead. They knew that the North sea and a route back to England were within reach.
It is almost impossible to imagine what the crew must have been thinking, the tension they must have felt. Every creak in the fuselage must have terrified them, every new sound grating in their frayed nerves. Of all the imagined and dreaded images that filled their nightmares surely their hearts would have skipped a beat when they saw a dark shape appear in the distance behind them.
One can only imagine the anxiety they must have felt as the shape closed in and revealed itself to be another plane. Did their anxiety become terror or simply resignation when they saw that their pursuer was an enemy fighter? They would have been more than familiar with the German sharks of the sky, the Messerschmidt ME109.
Their German pursuer was Lieutenant Franz Stigler and at 29 years old he was an experienced and highly decorated veteran pilot.
Stigler was a flying Ace and had flown dozens of successful missions.
He had already been credited with 29 kills — if he could only achieve one more kill he would secure the Knight’s Cross. This award was among Germany’s highest honours for bravery.
On this day, Stigler had already been involved in aerial combat. He had landed and was reloading and refuelling on the ground when he and his crew noticed the injured B-17 lumbering slowly overhead.
Within minutes he was in the air giving chase. Even Stigler must have been surprised by how quickly he caught up to the stricken bomber and he must have thought about the precious Knight’s Cross— only a leather gloved trigger-finger away.
But for some reason Stigler fought back his instinct to attack as he approached the bomber. Perhaps he was shocked by the condition of the plane. As he closed in he might have seen the slumped body of the tail-gunner. Perhaps he was intrigued when the B17 didn’t open fire on him. Did this give Stigler an opportunity to check out the plane in more detail? Would he have been able to see the men inside the plane through the large holes in the fuselage.
Whatever his reasons, the German did not pull the trigger. Those that knew Lt Stigler described him as being a man of indomitable courage and bravery, but also as a man of honour, not an assassin.
While he fought for his country, he did so out of a sense of patriotic duty. He had never bought into the Nazi philosophy or joined the Party, and he prided himself in fighting by his own code. The Knights Cross could go hang. Stigler said, ‘I will not have this on my conscience for the rest of my life.’
But rather than feeling relieved, the men aboard the American bomber must have been cursing this cruel German. Surely he was toying with the anxious and bewildered men as they stared at the Messerschmidt.
Their German enemy was now flying just above their right wing tip as if it was in formation. They could clearly see the pilots face. What’s the bastard up to? He must be toying with us? Why doesn’t he just get it over with?
The crew must have been doubly confused when the enemy pilot was waving frantically at them, almost as if he was trying to give them a message.
By his own account Stigler was now struggling with a dilemma. While he had decided against attacking the plane he now became concerned for the crew. If he just let them fly off it was likely that another fighter would spot them and that the American crew might not enjoy the same luck twice. Stigler was determined to save the B-17 and knew that the course they were on would take them over German anti-aircraft guns. With the B-17 flying at such a low altitude they would have little chance of survival. Stigler’s waving had been an effort to get the bomber to change course and head eastwards to the neutral Sweden.
Even in there stricken state, Sweden was a mere 30 minutes away and they could crash-land there. But despite Stigler’s best efforts, his words were getting lost due to the sound of the engines, so Brown clung onto the controls for dear life and carried on. Stigler then decide to take a big gamble. He reasoned that if the gunners on the ground saw his Messerschmidt side by side with the enemy, they would hold their fire. Stigler put his own life on the line, but It worked and not one shot was fired at the plane.
But Stigler went from the frying pan into the fire as he realised he now faced a different danger. There was little doubt that people on the ground would have seen his fighter escorting an enemy plane. If word got back he did he could face a court martial and a firing squad for treason. In the B-17 the crew were confused as the Messerschmitt continued alongside them. The ‘crazy’ German pilot was gesturing them again but again the message could not be heard.
By now Brown had enough of the Messerschmitt flying on his wing as he was still convinced that the German was toying with them. There had been many accounts of cruel acts on both sides, there were stories of fighters circling men who had bailed out of their planes, waiting until they almost made it to safety before shooting them dead.
Brown ordered the one remaining operational gun turret to be aimed at the enemy fighter. When Stigler saw the barrels turning he got the message. He had done all that he could, he wished them ‘good luck’, saluted the Americans and then peeled away.
Brown and his men struggled on. As the plane slipped to 1,000ft they jettisoned everything that was weighty: radio, guns, even the spent cartridge casings on the floor had to go. As they got closer to England they were joined by American P-47 pilots guiding them home. At last they cleared the coast of England, just 250ft off the ground. Lt Brown headed straight for the first air strip in sight and landed the plane successfully.
After the initial shock of the situation had worn off Brown and his crew recounted their experience and reflected on their mission. As their minds cleared they soon realised that the real hero of the mission was the unknown Messerschmitt pilot.
That is what Brown told intelligence officers at the de-briefing. He and his crew were convinced that they owed there lives to a good German. But this was perhaps the last thing that his superiors would ever want to hear. The last thing that the military command wanted was for Allied airmen to believe there were merciful German pilots out there.
Would the crew on future missions hesitate or even hold back on there trigger only to lose their lives as a consequence. Brown and his crew were ordered not to tell a soul.
After his encounter with the B-17, Franz Stigler had returned to his base expecting the Gestapo to be waiting. The Luftwaffe was always suspect in the eyes of the Nazis.
Incredibly his good deed seemed to have paid off and there was no Gestapo waiting committee. But this encounter led Stigler to question everything that his beloved country had become under Adolf Hitler. He lost his appetite for the Knight’s Cross. Despite his completing over 500 combat missions he never actually registered any further ‘kills’, therefore he never achieved the thirtieth victory which would have earned him The Knight’s Cross, an award he now saw as a worthless piece of metal.
In the aftermath of the war, Stigler ironically ended up working in a Messerschmitt factory – this time making sewing machines under U.S. direction rather then warplanes. In 1953 he emigrated to Canada to work as a mechanical engineer in a logging camp. Stigler bought his own Messerschmitt and whenever possible he appeared in air shows as the Nazi villain being pursued by vintage American fighters. But the memory of the B-17 all those years ago stayed with him.
Brown survived the war and for the next 40 years he kept the secret, but he never forgot. He retired to Florida and finally told the story of the lone Messerschmitt at a veterans’ reunion in 1985 to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the war.
After all those years of bottling up his secret he was finally determined to find out who the mystery German pilot had been and why he had helped them. He made enquiries as best he could and might have been persuaded to give up his quest, but after long and fruitless years he was made aware of a newsletter that was produced for the association of German fighter pilots. He wrote his story, sent it to the magazine’s editors and waited for the remotest possibility of a response.
In a perfect Hollywood twist, Lt Franz Stigler had been living in Vancouver, Canada for almost 40 years. Franz Stigler opened his regular newsletter, and could not believe his eyes. Here out of the blue, was the missing piece of the jigsaw in his life.
He had always wondered if the crew had survived although he would probably never get an answer. Until by chance he saw Charlie Brown’s story in the newsletter. The two old men spoke on the phone and then met up in an emotional reunion. They wept as the hugged each other and each man recounted their version of what happened on that day back in 1943.
The men became dear friends and they travelled across the US to take there unique story to veterans clubs and air museums. Franz Stigler sadly passed away in March 2008, and Charlie Brown died 8 months later.
