A World War II Story of Mercy and Chivalry
The B-17 “Flying Fortress” was a four-engine heavy bomber used extensively by the United States Army Air Forces for daytime runs over Germany during World War II. On the morning of December 20, 1943, a formation of B-17s took off from England to bomb an aircraft manufacturing plant in Bremen. 21 year-old pilot 2nd Lt. Charles Brown and his crew of 9 were flying their first combat mission. It should have been their last. Their story of mercy and wartime chivalry is beautifully told in the book A Higher Call by Adam Makos.
Biblical Mercy
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”
Lamentations 3:22-23
Mercy appears scores of times in the Bible, 26 times in Psalm 136 alone. It is alternately translated “Loving-Kindness”, “Steadfast Love,” and “Compassion.” Significantly, com-passion literally means “to suffer with,” linked as it is with the Passion of Christ. Biblical Mercy can also be defined as the withholding a deserved penalty. In the Gospel accounts, a cry for mercy precedes a request to heal their or a loved one’s affliction (see Matthew 9:27, 15:22, 20:30; Mark 9:22, 10:47, Luke 17:13, 18:38).
In the book of Lamentations the prophet Jeremiah – no stranger to suffering and persecution – describes the ways that God withheld his mercy and allowed the destruction and exile of unfaithful Jerusalem, while reminding the faithful remnant that “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (3:22-23).
As described in Acts 16, the Apostle Paul and his companion Silas were attacked by a mob, stripped, beaten with rods, and thrown into prison. At midnight, while they were praying and singing hymns (!!!), an earthquake shook loose their bonds and opened wide the prison doors. Instead of exacting vengeance, Paul and Silas showed mercy, preaching the Gospel to the jailer, who then bathed their wounds. He and his household were baptized and rejoiced.
God willingly bestows mercy, but like the Publican in the parable (Luke 18:9-14), our humility is a key prerequisite. And unlike the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:21-35), in return for God’s mercy he asks us to be merciful to others, to show compassion to an offender, an enemy, or one under our power.
Alone Over Enemy Territory
During bomber pilot Charlie Brown’s descent toward Bremen, heavy anti-aircraft fire destroyed the #2 and damaged the #4 engines. After dropping their bombs the B-17 flew behind another damaged straggler toward the North Sea. The pair was beset by multiple German fighters, and the lead Flying Fortress was destroyed, only three of the crew successfully bailing out. Charlie took drastic evasive actions for nearly ten minutes as fighter after fighter attacked the lone American bomber left in the vicinity. The #3 engine was damaged, the nose cone smashed, multiple holes were ripped through the fuselage, the rear stabilizer was shot off, and the 23 year-old tail gunner was killed outright. Most of the rest of the crew were wounded including the pilot, who briefly passed out after his oxygen line was severed. The bomber entered a flat spin and spiraled toward the ground.
As the B-17 rapidly lost altitude, it left behind the fighters attacking it. At about 6,000 feet, now in a nosedive, Charlie recovered consciousness and wrestled the controls to level her out. Flying low and slow, the surviving crew members assessed the damage and discussed bailing out, deliberating whether being prisoners of war would be preferable to the likelihood of either being destroyed by coastal artillery or facing an icy ditching at sea. As the crippled bomber headed toward the coast, it noisily skirted a Luftwaffe airfield. A lone German fighter hastily took off in pursuit.
“He’s Going to Destroy Us”
The ball turret gunner remembered watching the Messerschmidt Bf-109 fighter approaching from the rear, expecting the crippled B-17 to be shot from the sky at any moment. Instead the fighter pulled up in formation alongside the right wing of the bomber. Lt. Brown remembered, “I look out and there’s the world’s worst nightmare sitting on my wing.” The coastline with its flak guns lay just a few miles ahead. “He’s going to destroy us,” Charlie said. He flew on with dread. When the crippled American B-17 finally reached the coastline with the German escort, not a shot was fired at them from below. Shortly afterward the fighter pilot wiggled his wings in salute then peeled away, returning the way he had come. The American and the German “had flown side by side for fewer than ten minutes, never exchanging a word,” Adam Makos wrote. “Charlie did not know the German’s name or what he wanted, but he was certain of one thing: whoever he was, his enemy was a good man.”
The aircraft limped back to England, where Lt. Brown reported the incident. Not wanting to put a human face in a Nazi cockpit, American intelligence officers labeled the incident “Secret,” and forbade the crew to discuss it. An American colonel was flabbergasted at the damage the bomber had sustained; he was amazed it could fly at all, much less 275 miles across the North Sea. “Why didn’t you hit the silk over Germany?” he asked. When told one man was too injured to jump he said, “So you and your crew stayed for just one man?” “Yes, sir,” he replied. To Charlie and his men, it was the honorable thing to do. All nine surviving crewmen recovered from their injuries, and each lived long, productive lives.
“You Fight By Rules to Keep Your Humanity”
Still haunted by the memory decades later, in 1990 Charles Brown wrote an open letter to a German combat pilots’ newsletter in the dim hope of identifying the German aviator. Franz Stigler, a Bavarian-born Catholic businessman then living in Canada, wrote him back: “All these years I wondered what happened to the B17…, was it worth the risk of a Court Martial. I am happy that you made it, that it was worth it.” Stigler recalled approaching the B-17 from the rear and seeing the extensive damage, especially the tail gunner draped over his gun, blood streaming into the December sky. A former commander had told Franz, ““You fight by rules to keep your humanity…. If I ever hear of you firing at a man in a parachute, I’ll shoot you myself.” Stigler later said, “To me, it was just like they were in a parachute. I saw them and I couldn’t shoot them down.”
In 1940, I lost my only brother as a night fighter…. [In 1943], 4 days before Christmas, I had the chance to save a B-17 from her destruction, a plane so damaged it was a wonder she was still flying. The pilot, Charlie Brown, is for me as precious as my brother was.
German Luftwaffe Ace Franz Stigler
Adam Makos writes, “Franz gazed at the men in the waist tending one another’s wounds. He looked into the ashen face of the ball turret gunner. He thought about what his [dead bomber pilot] brother August would have done. A gear clicked in Franz’s soul. He laid his hand over his pocket and felt his rosary beads within. This will be no victory for me, Franz decided. I will not have this on my conscience for the rest of my life.” Franz tried signaling the American pilot to land in Germany, or at least in neutral Sweden. Brown did not understand the enemy pilot’s signals, and anxiously flew on toward the North Sea, where Stigler saluted him and returned to combat, understanding he risked a firing squad should anyone ever find out what he did. The men became friends and brothers, speaking together at events about the incident. Both men died in 2008. A CBC News broadcast from 2013 describes the event and shows video of both men.
The Divine Mercy Message
Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Matthew 9:13
Maria Faustina Kowalska was an uneducated girl from a poor Polish family who as a nun in the 1930s received a series of visions. Jesus instructed St. Faustina to write His message of Divine Mercy in notebooks, including instructions for a Divine Mercy Feast (the 2nd Sunday of Easter); a Divine Mercy Image of Jesus (with rays of blood and water emanating from his side and the signature, “Jesus, I Trust in You”); a Novena; and a Chaplet, if possible to be prayed at the 3:00 hour. The Divine Mercy message is as simple as ABC: ASK for mercy, BE merciful, COMPLETELY trust in Jesus. We need God’s mercy in our lives. And though it needn’t be as dramatic as the incident between the two World War II pilots, God is merciful to us that we might be conduits of His mercy.
“For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
Divine Mercy Chaplet
The Divine Mercy Chaplet:
- On ordinary Rosary beads pray the Our Father, Hail Mary, Apostle’s Creed
- On the “Our Father” beads pray, “Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your Dearly Beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.”
- On the “Hail Mary” beads pray, “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
- In conclusion pray three times, “Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
Quotes from A Higher Call by Adam Makos (© 2012 Penguin Group USA).
Feature Image: Valor Studios, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
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