A Higher Call

by Adam Makos

Galland believed that Goering, who now wielded absolute power over him, had summoned him to have him killed. A bullet would do what JV-44 had failed to accomplish.

With forty jets now entrusted to him, Franz had his hands full. He was so busy that he had allowed another pilot to fly White 3 on a mission that morning.

Around 2:00 P.M., the phone rang at the alert shack. The orphanage was calling with a mission—American medium bombers had been spotted approaching Munich. Eager to escape the headaches of his new job, Franz convinced Hohagen to put him on the roster.

Fresh in Luetzow’s mind was the news of the day. Galland had received a call from Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. Hitler’s minister of armaments, Albert Speer, wanted JV-44 to arrest Goering.

The SS had arrested Goering because Galland had declined to do so.

Luetzow had been right about Steinhoff. Nearly a week after his crash Steinhoff was still alive. JV-44’s ground officer, Major Roell, who had saved the American bomber crewman in Munich, had visited Steinhoff in the basement of a hospital. There beneath dangling lightbulbs, Steinhoff lay, bandaged head to toe with only holes for his eyes and mouth. But he was alert and his mind was functioning.

“Sir, I think I’m losing an engine,” Franz told Luetzow. Luetzow cautioned Franz not to take any chances and to return to base. Franz reluctantly peeled off and steered for Munich. With the flight reduced to four jets, Luetzow continued with the mission.

Seconds of silence followed. The voice of the Count crackled and said they were turning for home.

Luetzow’s plane banked gracefully to the right. When it faced south toward the snowcapped Alps, its wings leveled. The Count and the others called one another with alarm. “Where is he going?” someone said. Beyond their right wingtips, they watched Luetzow’s jet shrink until it was barely discernible.

Listlessly, the pilots pushed their food around their plates. Franz could not bring himself to look over at Galland, who hung his head, knowing he had called Luetzow back from Italy and to his death. Galland sat alone that night, with Steinhoff’s empty chair to his right and an empty seat to his left, where the Man of Ice once sat.

“One flight,” Franz shouted at Pirchan’s back. “Really?” Pirchan asked. Franz nodded.* Franz told Pirchan he could take White 3 up for one combat mission with JV-44. But Franz had one condition. “You go up, circle a few times, and land,” he told Pirchan. “I’ll sign your logbook so it will count as a combat mission.” The young Austrian could not stop nodding. Franz knew that the skies were safer than usual. The American heavies had stopped bombing Germany two days prior.

Pirchan had crashed between two houses.

Pirchan asked Franz to tell his mother and sister good-bye for him. Franz promised he would. He gave the young fighter pilot a shot of pain reliever and the boy died in his arms.

The general lowered his voice to a whisper. He told Franz he was planning to deliver JV-44 to the Americans before the war ended. Franz knew this meant a defection and not just of one man, but of the whole unit. Galland was certain the Americans would soon be fighting the Soviets and would want the 262s to study the jets or use them in combat. Galland planned to surrender JV-44’s aircraft, pilots, and operational knowledge to the Americans. He suggested that JV-44 could even fly for them.

had decided to ask his pilots to ferry every flyable plane to Salzburg, Austria, the next morning, where they would be safer. Franz knew that if the SS caught wind of Galland’s plan, they would execute every man in the unit as a collaborator. “I’ll go as far as Salzburg,” Franz told Galland. Galland smiled. “Then where will you go?” Franz said he had no idea. Galland assured Franz that the Americans would be looking for him. Franz did not understand why they would want him. Galland reminded him, “They’ll want you for what you have up here,” he said, pointing to his head.

The instant Franz’s boots landed on the tarmac at Salzburg Airport, he began to plot his escape. He opened a hatch in the jet’s fuselage and shouldered a backpack filled with canned food. He brought no clothes other than the ones he flew in. He looked east, where the sun shined on the white hilltop castle Hohensalzburg. He knew that far beyond that were the Soviets.

Looking west, he saw tall gray mountains with snowy peaks that loomed over the airfield. Franz knew the mountain passes wound south toward Berchtesgaden, where Hitler and Goering once lived. That’s where the Americans were headed. He decided he would rather be a prisoner of the Americans than the Soviets.

“You’re just going to walk?” Hohagen asked. Franz nodded. His plan was to head south a bit then cut west into the mountains. Then something caught Franz’s eye. A kettenkrad clinked past while towing one of JV-44’s twenty remaining jets into the woods along the airfield. Franz knew a kettenkrad, with its tank tracks, could go anywhere. Hohagen saw Franz eyeing the kettenkrad.

“Help yourself when they’re not looking,” Hohagen suggested. “I’ll take the blame. If they give me hell, I can just point to my head.” He and Franz chuckled.

Franz had entered the Alps near Hallein, Austria, several days earlier and driven until he found a lodge where other wayward soldiers had congregated. Franz had joined them and lived off his canned food while waiting.

Franz set out again, his boots now crunching the dirt. Through gaps in the pine trees, he kept his eyes on the bright, flowing stream and the main road beyond the stream, where he expected to see American tanks. Turning a bend, Franz stopped in his tracks. In the path ahead of him stood twenty or more SS soldiers.

Franz realized they had hung the soldier he had found earlier. It was a message to other Germans to stay away. They had most likely mined the main road and were waiting for the same American tanks Franz had expected to see.

Franz knew the soldiers on either side of him were the toughest and most ruthless in Germany. No pilot of the German Air Force, except for Goering, would ever be convicted of a war crime. The same could not be said of the SS men whom Franz walked past.

With every step away from them, Franz expected to hear the crack of a rifle and to feel the punch of a bullet in his back. But none came. By some miracle, as if he were invisible, they let him live.

Franz saw a green armored vehicle facing him, its gun leveled on the road. He knew he had reached the outskirts of Berchtesgaden. The vehicle wore a white American star on its hood. Franz raised his arms in surrender.

Finally in 1947, he found work fixing sewing machines at an unlikely place: the Messerchmitt company in Augsburg, near the former jet school at Lechfeld.

When Franz and Eva relocated to Canada they settled with Eva’s brother, who had moved to Vancouver, on the west coast, to work in the lumber industry.

Some would say that a good relationship requires “a sun and a moon,” and Franz and Eva were both suns—strong and stubborn. Their divorce, when it came in 1954, was amicable.

Hiya confided that the Soviets had raped most of the women in and around Berlin in the year after the war. She would not talk about what happened to her sister.

Within a year of meeting they headed to the city hall in Vancouver and were married.

Despite his hesitation, Franz traveled to the Museum of Flight at Paine Field to attend Boeing’s party. Once again, Franz found himself a lone German traveling through a swarm of Americans.

“The odds against this happening are millions to one,” Charlie told the camera. “First, of either of us surviving for forty-six-plus years, and then being able to get in contact.” Jackson interjected and asked Franz what he was feeling, having finally met Charlie. Franz struggled with his words. “It wasn’t easy,” Franz said as he fought tears and began to sniffle. “I hugged him.” Wiping his eyes with one hand, he slapped Charlie on the shoulder to keep from crying and said, “I love you, Charlie.”

gentleman to destroy us.” Charlie never had his nightmares of “the spin” again after meeting Franz.

Franz and Galland would continue to talk week after week until Galland’s death in 1996.

“Franz, there’s two gentlemen who would like to meet you,” Charlie said, fighting a grin. He steered Franz out from under the wing and into the light. The first veteran to reach Franz was Charlie’s old ball turret gunner, Sam “Blackie” Blackford, whose wide mustache was gray and whose head was bald but for wispy gray hair above his ears. Blackie started crying as he shook Franz’s hand vigorously, refusing to stop. The other veteran was Charlie’s radio operator, Dick Pechout, whose hair had turned white and whose eyes remained meek behind tortoiseshell glasses. Charlie looped his arms over Franz and Blackie, hugging them. Blackie broke down. Through sobs, he thanked Franz for sparing his life and said that because Franz had not pulled the trigger on him, his children and grandchildren were able to experience life. Pechout draped his arms silently around Franz and the others as the four huddled.

From above it must have looked funny, the circle of people crowding around one small man in the center, hugging him and one another amid sounds of tears and laughter. But everyone that day owed something to Franz Stigler, the man in the middle. Because of him, twenty-five men, women, and children—the descendants of Charlie, Blackie, and Pechout—had the chance to live, not to mention the children and grandchildren of Charlie’s other crewmen.

earlier. In April 2008, the Air Force summoned Charlie to the Florida State Capitol and awarded him the nation’s second highest medal for valor—the Air Force Cross.

Today, with a combined nine Silver Stars and one Air Force Cross, the crew of Ye Olde Pub remains one of the most decorated bomber crews in history.