It was 20 December 1943, and at that moment, 25,000 feet over Germany, Second Lieutenant Charles L. Brown, U. S. Army Air Forces, figured he would not see Christmas.  Ever again.

Twenty-one-year-old “Charlie” Brown, assigned to the 379^th Bomb Group, was flying his first mission as aircraft commander of his B-17 Flying Fortress, which the crew had named Ye Olde Pub.  The assignment was to bomb the Focke-Wulf aircraft plant at Bremen, Germany.

Brown’s plane and the rest of his squadron flew into a massacre.  The Focke-Wulf plant was heavily defended, both by German fighters and the deadly 88 millimetre anti-aircraft guns.  They hadn’t even gotten halfway through the bombing run when the 88 batteries opened up.  Flak bursts ripped through the bombers.  The flight leader’s ship caught fire and plunged earthward.  More bursts damaged two of the four engines of Charlie’s plane.

Its speed sharply reduced, Ye Olde Pub fell behind the rest of the squadron.  As if things weren’t bad enough, suddenly eight Luftwaffe fighters appeared in front of him and began their attack.  Bullets raked the bomber’s fuselage.  Seven more German planes approached from the rear.  Bravely, the gunners of the Ye Olde Pub managed to hold off the enemy planes until they broke off their attack.  That wasn’t good news, though.  The departure of the German fighters meant the next set of anti-aircraft batteries was about to cut loose.

Flying through the hail of deadly flak, Lieutenant Brown stayed on target and dropped his bombs.  But it came at a cost.  The stricken bomber lost its tail stabiliser to the exploding cannon shells.  The ship’s nose was sheered off.  Its run completed, far behind the rest of the squadron, Charlie turned toward home, only to be met by twenty-five Luftwaffe fighters.

Like a pack of wolves, the German planes descended upon the crippled B-17.  Enemy bullets  chewed through metal and flesh.  The Ye Olde Pub’s electrical systems went haywire, and one lucky shot tore through the pump supplying oxygen to the crew.  At that high altitude, Brown and everyone else on board lost consciousness within minutes.  Ye Olde Pub lurched, then tumbled from the sky.  The German planes peeled off, figuring the American bomber was finished.

Miraculously, just as it reached treetop level, the B-17 righted itself and flew itself with an unconscious crew.

With air returning, Brown and his men awoke.  Charlie swiftly regained the controls and eased the plane up before a tree could stab it out of the air.  As the bomber shuddered through the sky, Brown took an inventory of the damages.  Two engines gone.  Electrical system shot.  Gaping holes over every foot of the ship.  As for human casualties, the tail gunner was dead, and four men were injured, including Charlie, who had caught a bullet fragment in his shoulder.

Brown wrestled with the controls, rolling and twisting to keep the damaged ship level.  He ordered the navigator to plot a course westward, back to the English Channel.  The young pilot was too busy to notice before it was too late that they were flying right over a German airbase.  Suddenly, a Luftwaffe Messerschmitt appeared on their tail, closing in fast.  Only one of the B-17’s guns was still manned, the belly turret, and its guns were jammed.

Ye Olde Pub was helpless.  It couldn’t even manœuvre; it took everything Brown had just to keep the ship level.  As the German fighter drew in for the kill, Charlie knew he and his men would not live to see Christmas.

Oberleutnant Franz Stigler, commander of Luftwaffe squadron number 6, JG-27, had been one of the German fighter pilots to go against the American B-17’s sent to bomb the Focke-Wulf plant.  He had shot down two of the U.S. bombers already.  One more that day, and he would automatically be awarded the Knight’s Cross, Germany’s highest military decoration.

He had landed to refuel and rearm when he saw Lieutenant Brown’s plane limp through the sky, over the woods behind the airbase.  Stigler leapt into his plane and took off after the stricken American craft.  Using classic tactics, he came up behind and above Ye Olde Pub, closing to about 200 feet.  Stigler saw the tail guns and expected them to raise and take aim at him.  His finger curled around the firing trigger of his own guns.

But the bomber’s tail guns did not rise; they hung down uselessly.  Out of curiosity, Stigler held his fire and flew in closer, to about twenty feet.  He could see the body of the tail gunner, bleeding profusely.  Stigler brought his plane abreast of the bomber and, for the first time, got a close look at its extensive damage.  He could hardly believe what he saw.  Years later, he would describe it as “the most badly damaged aircraft I ever saw, which was still flying.”

Through the yawning holes in the side, Stigler could see the crew.  The defenseless, wounded men and the dead tail gunner.  The Luftwaffe pilot could not bring himself to shoot.  Instead, he drew alongside the cockpit of Ye Olde Pub and saw Lieutenant Brown, his shoulder blood-soaked, fighting desperately with the controls.  He got the American pilot’s attention and signaled him to land.  Brown shook his head.

Stigler was dismayed.  He had hoped the bomber would land.  He was not thinking of the Americans as enemy combatants now; he was feeling for them as fellow aviators.  Their plane could not stay airborne much longer.  They had to get down before it was too late.  Yes, they would become POW’s, but they would survive the war and return home to their loved ones when it was over.  He motioned again for Brown to land; again, the American pilot refused.

England was an hour away.  Stigler was sure that the bomber wouldn’t stay in the air for half that time.  The German pilot stayed on the wing of the wounded ship and escorted it to the North Sea.  Stigler accompanied it until they were past the coastline, which was as far as the German could go without risking being intercepted by Allied fighters.

In Ye Olde Pub’s cockpit, Lieutenant Brown had been agonising.  Why hadn’t this German plane shot them down?  What was he waiting for?  Their ship was nearly dead, anyway.  Even he didn’t know why it was staying up in the air.  Then he saw something which would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Stigler edged his plane as close to the bomber as he dared.  Then he saluted Brown.

Stigler broke off and headed back to his base.  Charlie Brown’s damaged B-17 made it across the North Sea, barely, and made an emergency landing at a British airfield.  A colonel asked Brown how he had managed to fly the plane with half of its tail shot off.  Brown stared back at Ye Olde Pub in amazement.  He hadn’t even known it.

Both Brown and Stigler survived the war.  For his feat of flying, Brown was nominated for the Medal of Honor.  Instead, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.  Stigler never received the Knight’s Cross.  And he could never tell anyone of what he had done for Brown and his crew.  “I would have been court-martialled,” he would explain.

Decades later, Charlie Brown determined to find the German pilot who had spared him and his crew that day.  Through a network of airmen and an item he arranged to have published in a German aviation magazine, Brown finally succeeded.  One day, he received a letter with a Canadian stamp.  It was from Franz Stigler.  Several years before, Stigler had moved to British Columbia and had become a successful businessman.

Three months later, Brown met with Stigler in Seattle.  As a surprise for the former Luftwaffe ace, Brown presented Stigler with a painting of their two planes as he last remembered them, commissioned from the artist Bob Harper.  (You can see it in the art accompanying this article.)

As word of Stigler’s act of chivalry circulated, they were invited to appear before American and Canadian military audiences.  At the first of these, Stigler was asked why he refused to shoot down Brown’s B-17.  Stigler replied:

“I didn’t have the heart to finish off those brave men.  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.”

Every December, in his Spirit Section, Will Eisner would write a story about the Christmas spirit, which he saw as a palpable force which moved men to uncharacteristic acts of remarkable selflessness and generosity.  Maybe, just maybe, it was this spirit which filled Franz Stigler on that day in late December, 1943.  Or, perhaps, it was simple, decent humanity which caused Franz Stigler to see the American bomber crew not as the enemy, but as fellow human beings in peril, and led him to such an incredible act of compassion.

Either way, it was a Christmas miracle for Lieutenant Brown and his men.

Charlie Brown had one last surprise for Franz Stigler.  Not too long after their meeting in Seattle, he again invited Stigler to visit him in America.  While out for a walk, Brown and Stigler arrived at a local park where several families were enjoying a picnic outing.

Charlie walked up to the group and asked for their attention.  The German was a bit puzzled at the way Brown was interrupting the gathering.  What he didn’t know was that the picnic was a reunion of the surviving members of Ye Olde Pub, and their wives and children and grandchildren.

Putting his arm on Stigler’s shoulder, Brown said, “Franz, you are responsible for the lives of these families before you, and we all thank you.”

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