hello chaps ,recieved this in my email today so thought id post it for those who havent yet seen it. Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler Look carefully at the B-17 and note how shot up it is - one engine dead, tail, horizontal stabilizer and nose shot up.. It was ready to fall out of the sky.. (This is a painting done by an artist from the description of both pilots many years later.) Then realize that there is a German ME-109 fighter flying next to it. Now read the story below. I think you'll be surprised..... "WWII hero with a remarkable story In 1943, a German pilot decided not to shoot down Charlie Brown's damaged plane. Brown died last month, but he lived to finally see his heroism recognized. BY CHARLES RABIN crabin@MiamiHerald.com When World War II bomber pilot Charlie Brown is laid to rest Saturday, his burial will close a chapter on one of the most remarkable war stories in modern history. It's a tale of two pilots -- one American, the other German -- and of a bloody, deadly battle in the sky that led to an extraordinary friendship. Brown, a fighter pilot, scientist, engineer and happy-hour connoisseur, died last month of heart complications. Born into poverty in West Virginia and a Miamian since the early 1970s, Brown will be buried Saturday at Woodlawn Park Cemetery South. He was 86. Brown's story, and his enduring friendship with a German flying ace, is of fairy-tale caliber. It has been told before. It bears retelling. At the break of dawn five days before Christmas 1943, Brown was piloting a B-17 bomber over Bremen, Germany, looking to strike an aircraft plant. The plane took heavy fire. Its nose was shot off, its engines damaged. Spiraling toward earth with a dead tail gunner and nine other crew members, Brown -- himself shot in the shoulder -- regained control of the craft, broke formation and continued to take on German fighters. Then a German pilot, flying a Messerschmitt Bf-109, motioned for Brown to land his crippled plane. Brown defied the order, shaking his head. What happened next was unexpected: Instead of shooting down the bomber, the German pilot escorted Brown and his crew to the North Sea, saluted, rolled his plane in tribute and flew off. Brown's plane landed safely on the English coast. BF-109 pilot Franz Stigler B-17 pilot Charlie Brown.. The Allies never revealed the German pilot's act, figuring he would be court-martialed and perhaps executed for failing to shoot down an enemy aircraft. For decades, Brown wondered about the German pilot -- through his post-war marriage to Delores, the birth of his two daughters in the 1950s, and well past his stint with the State Department during the Vietnam War. Brown retired from the military as a lieutenant colonel in the early 1970s. Then he moved to Miami, where he spent the next three decades toying around with combustible engines and inventing things like the ''Brown Air Charging System'' -- a device Brodie swears Brown attached to his car to get better gas mileage. With free time at hand, Brown began a search for the German pilot who spared his life. Not long after a 1986 story of the incident ran in a German newsletter, Brown found Franz Stigler, a German World War II ace living in Surrey, British Columbia, and still flying a Messerschmitt at air shows. The two met, compared notes and realized Stigler was the pilot. Stigler later said he didn't shoot down the plane because it was so badly damaged it would have been like shooting at a parachute. (L-R) German Ace Franz Stigler, artist Ernie Boyett, and B-17 pilot Charlie Brown. Stigler, who died in March, was a legend of the sky. Along with his 487 flights and 28 kills, he was shot down 17 times. From 1990 until Stigler's death earlier this year, he and Brown and their wives were exceptional friends, visiting each other at least twice a year. ''Charlie called him his big brother, and that about sums it up,'' said Stigler's 77-year-old widow, Helga Stigler. She said her husband had often wondered what happened to the American plane he escorted to sea -- a secret he kept from everyone but her. Brodie, the Veteran Affairs liaison, met Brown in 1995 after persuading him to tell his story to a South Miami-Dade Rotary Club. Brown took Stigler with him. ''There wasn't a dry eye in the house,'' Brodie said. In 2007, Brown and his crew received what had been long overdue: recognition. His story was told on the floor of Florida's House of Representatives. Soon after, the Air Force opened its archives on the incident. In February, the Air Force awarded Brown and the surviving crew members on that December 1943 flight Silver Stars for valor in combat. Brown also received the Air Force's second-highest honor, the Air Force Cross.
classics http://forum.wbfree.net/forums/showpost.php?p=29700&postcount=10 http://forum.wbfree.net/forums/showpost.php?p=413364&postcount=15 will read again
