A Higher Call

by Adam Makos

For fun, Franz took to flying sport planes and even purchased a Messerschmitt 108, a four-seat personal transport plane with elegant lines just like his old 109’s. He even painted the 108 like his wartime 109 and flew it at air shows as “the bad guy” that P-51s would chase around the sky to the crowd’s delight.

Galland had returned to Germany and flown an air race with Edu Neumann and in air shows. He had consulted on the movie Battle of Britain and ran the Association of German Fighter Pilots. He had married three times, raised a family, and often vacationed with his former British enemies, fighter pilots Robert Standford Tuck and Douglas Bader.

A memory resurfaced, one long locked away. In his mind, he saw the battered bomber he had let escape. He told the story to Hiya for the first time. The question began troubling him again, like an unhealed wound: “Did the B-17 make it home to England?” He knew the only people he could ask would be the plane’s crew. But the odds were slim that they had made it across the sea, let alone survived the war. Of the twelve thousand B-17s built, five thousand had been destroyed in combat. Even slimmer was the prospect that if the crew had survived, they would still be alive forty-one years later, or even possible to locate. Franz had no names to reference. No tail number, just a memory. But Franz knew he had taken a great risk in helping the bomber escape, and he longed to know: Was it worth it?

“We knew we had a job to do—defend our country,” Franz said in the program, “and we knew the boys in those airplanes had a job to do, too, because they had orders to get the war finished and it was just such fierce combat.” Franz left Boeing’s party with new friends among former adversaries and an invitation from the American Fighter Aces veteran’s association to attend future reunions as their guest. Franz returned to Vancouver certain that he would never know the B-17 crew’s fate.

Charlie and Jackie hit it off and married in 1949. That same year Charlie returned to the Air Force and made a career in military intelligence and even served in London as an attaché to the RAF. During this time, he and Jackie had two children, daughters Carol and Kimberly.

“You should look for him,” Jackson urged Charlie. “He might still be out there.” Charlie knew the odds were slim. The German fighter pilots had been all but wiped out. How could he find an unknown enemy pilot he had flown with for ten minutes, neither having exchanged a single word? It was forty-two years later, but still he wondered, Who was he and why did he let us go?

“Do you think you could paint a portrait of our plane?” Charlie asked him. Harper remembered The Pub and agreed. “This time is it safe to include the German?” Charlie joked. Harper laughed and agreed to paint the 109 flying alongside The Pub, his way of making amends for having quashed the story during the war.

Charlie tried another route and wrote to Galland to ask for his help. Galland replied by letter that he had never heard of a 109 sparing a B-17, but he would order Jaegerblatt’s editor to publish Charlie’s note.

“Is this Mr. Franz Stigler?” Charlie asked. “Ja,” Franz replied. “This is he.” “The Franz Stigler who flew in World War Two?” Charlie asked. “Ja,” Franz replied, sounding confused. “Franz, I think we go way back. This is Charlie Brown.”

I have the distinct feeling that some power greater than that of our respective governments was looking out for most of us on Dec. 20, 1943. To say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU on behalf of my surviving crewmembers and their families appears totally inadequate.

“Did you find out why he spared you?” she had asked. Charlie nodded. “I was too stupid to surrender,” Charlie said. “And Franz Stigler was too much of a gentleman to destroy us.”

Even forty-six years later, he considered Franz’s act to be dereliction of duty—and yet the right thing to do. Franz and Galland would continue to talk week after week until Galland’s death in 1996.

The calls disturbed Hiya until Franz told her, “You have to understand that people were being killed by the B-17s, and this person who called may have lost his family to a bombing raid.”

Charlie and the veterans of the 379th Bomb Group had invited Franz to attend as their guest. They had given him the hat he wore. They would one day make him an honorary member of the 379th Bomb Group.

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.

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.

Johannes “Macky” Steinhoff joined the new Air Force and climbed the ranks in spite of his severe disfigurement from his burns.

CHARLIE NEVER HAD contact with Marjorie after the war, but last heard she had gotten married and never stopped flying.

After fifty-two years of marriage he died in Hiya’s arms. Charlie Brown died in November 2008, eight months after Franz.

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. Franz Stigler never got the Knight’s Cross, but as he always said, he got something better.

National Air and Space Museum (Washington, DC)* The Military Aviation Museum (Virginia Beach, Virginia)*

At the war’s end, a Me-262, the world’s most advanced aircraft, lies abandoned in Austria.