Interesting Story......

[Donziweasel]

Emailed to me by a freind-
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.....
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/johnnyalltrans/b-17.jpg
Charlie Brown was a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot with the 379th Bomber Group at Kimbolton , England . His B-17 was called 'Ye Old Pub' and was in a terrible state, having been hit by flak and fighters. The compass was damaged and they were flying deeper over enemy territory instead of heading home to Kimbolton.
After flying the B-17 over an enemy airfield, a German pilot named Franz Steigler was ordered to take off and shoot down the B-17. When he got near the B-17, he could not believe his eyes. In his words, he 'had never seen a plane in such a bad state'. The tail and rear section was severely damaged, and the tail gunner wounded. The top gunner was all over the top of the fuselage. The nose was smashed and there were holes everywhere.
Despite having ammunition, Franz flew to the side of the B-17 and looked at Charlie Brown, the pilot. Brown was scared and struggling to control his damaged and blood-stained plane.
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/johnnyalltrans/pilots1.jpg
Aware that they had no idea where they were going, Franz waved at Charlie to turn 180 degrees. Franz escorted and guided the stricken plane to, and slightly over, the North Sea towards England . He then saluted Charlie Brown and turned away, back to Europe . When Franz landed he told the CO that the plane had been shot down over the sea, and never told the truth to anybody. Charlie Brown and the remains of his crew told all at their briefing, but were ordered never to talk about it.
More than 40 years later, Charlie Brown wanted to find the Luftwaffe pilot who saved the crew. After years of research, Franz was found. He had never talked about the incident, not even at post-war reunions.
They met in the USA at a 379th Bomber Group reunion, together with 25 people who are alive now - all because Franz never fired his guns that day.
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w190/johnnyalltrans/pilots2.jpg
(L-R) German Ace Franz Stigler, artist Ernie Boyett, and B-17 pilot Charlie Brown.
When asked why he didn't shoot them down, Stigler later said, "I didn't have the heart to finish 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 that. I could not have shot at them. It would have been the same as shooting at a man in a parachute."
Both men died in 2008.
This is a true story http://www.snopes.com/military/charliebrown.asp
THIS WAS BACK IN THE DAYS WHEN THERE WAS HONOR IN BEING A WARRIOR...THEY PROUDLY WORE UNIFORMS, AND THEY DIDN'T HIDE IN AMBUSH INSIDE A MOSQUE, OR BEHIND WOMEN AND CHILDREN, NOR DID THEY USE MENTALLY RETARDED WOMEN AS SUICIDE BOMBERS TO TARGET AND KILL INNOCENT CIVILIANS...MY HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED......

[SilverBack]

That is a great story!!

[cutwater]

Man, this gives me chills. The last paragraph sums it up. Great story.

[Ghost]

I agree, it is a great story of human compassion in a sea of violence, pain and suffering.


THIS WAS BACK IN THE DAYS WHEN THERE WAS HONOR IN BEING A WARRIOR...THEY PROUDLY WORE UNIFORMS, AND THEY DIDN'T HIDE IN AMBUSH INSIDE A MOSQUE, OR BEHIND WOMEN AND CHILDREN, NOR DID THEY USE MENTALLY RETARDED WOMEN AS SUICIDE BOMBERS TO TARGET AND KILL INNOCENT CIVILIANS...MY HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED......

I would offer one thought about the quote above, however. I think we have a lot of incomplete notions of what WWII was like, based on the natural sective memory that occurs over time in a society, for many reasons.

The horrors of WWII were, as I understand them, very much like the horrors of today's conflicts. For instance, the occupation of France and the subsequent reprisals when things turned around were absolutely ghastly. Torture, rape, bayoneting women and children in the public squares in response to Resistance sabotage or assassinations, (by definition, done by non-uniformed fighters--called terrorists by one side and heroes by the other). Not to mention the Japanese treatment of our soldiers, and of the occupied Chinese.

I don't say all this to be an a$$hole, but only because I think that while a lot of things HAVE changed, this sort of inhumanity and brutal tactics strike me as some that have not.

I DO think the Allies in WWII were probably guilty of a lot fewer atrocities, probably in part due to NOT being the ones trying to suppress conquered civilian populations, and partly because, frankly, our regimes were simply less brutal than the Nazis or Japanese of the time.

Some of the modern day fighting seems to have made a leap, analagous to the leap into the trenches of WWI, when field tactics changed greatly, and which many from prior days called dishonorable. The new leap I think stems from superweapons have made most conventional fighting very predictable in its outcome, with such clear lopsided powers based on technology. So, people have just skipped that part, and resorted to fighting out of uniform, which always happened, it was just considered the inevitable "dirty" part of larger wars.

But enough digression--to me, all of that sort of history shows that much more the significance of instances of compassion and humanity like the Charlie Brown event, when the goodness within men rejects the horror, and rises up from the muck of inhumanity. Thanks for posting it.

Mike

Mike

[RedDog]

My father, RIP, was a B-17 pilot and flew many missions from England to the German skies. On his last mission he couldn't make it back to England and had to divert to Sweden.

He sat out the rest of the war in Sweden as an intern. Sweden being neutral, couldn't turn the fliers back to the Allies. I read 68 B-17s ended up diverting to Sweden.

At first he was listed as MIA - that is until his picture appeared on a Post (???) magazine cover hugging a blond...


On a mission to Berlin on March 9, 1944, Davidson’s B-17, piloted by Lt. Dick W. Floyd, received substantial flak damage to its number three engine causing the plane to quickly lose altitude. After a brief escort by two P-51 fighters, the B-17 broke through the clouds and crash landed on a frozen lake in Sweden where they interned for seven months.

[Donziweasel]

Pretty cool story Reddog. :)

[RedDog]

Pretty cool story Reddog. :)

Yeah - he managed to crash 2 planes during his service. If he hadn't gotten a medical discharge after his second one he probably would have been kicked out.

After the war he was on a training mission / plane ferry from Little Rock to Smyrna TN (outside Nashville) in a P-38 Lightning. The actual reason for the trip likely was to come home to see my grandmother and a party on the town. Well both him and his wing man got lost in a storm and ran out fuel before they could find a landing strip. He had to bail out and got busted up pretty good. Seems my grandmother was in the Smyrna control tower when they were communicating with him to try and find out where he was.

The Nashville paper interviewed him about this back in the 80s. He embellished the story quite a bit - very funny story - landed on a farmer's outhouse and the Air Force billed him for the parachute. I'll try to get article and post it some time.

[mattyboy]

great story Red,
there is a big push on right now to document alot of these stories as sadly that generation is quickly departing us. We lost my uncle last year at 89 he was the last male of that generation in our family. My Dad and all of his brothers signed up and went on to the war in the Navy , Army and Marines.

they all had some stories some funny some sad some heroic.

My dad served in the 2nd Army as a tank commander and fought thru Europe, he told us a story about the battle of the bulge his column of tanks had captured a german installtion and took them as prisoners. so now they are marching the prisoners on a small country road and with respect to the german officers they were able to take one of their cars while the foot soldiers had to march . Now you have prioners marching between tanks and my Dad in the last tank escorting the car of german officers. the car develops problems stalls restarts and they catch up to the column again this went on several times each time opening the hood . My Dad said he didn't know if it was a real problem or the officers were trying something to isolate the last tank and try to escape, he knew he did want to lose his column or fall to far behind . My Dad quickly lost his patience with them and the car HE said I'll fix it get out the crew of the tank watched the prisoners while my Dad in the tank proceeded to run the car over and flatten it .
He said after that the german officers had no problem double timing it on foot to catch up with the column.

As a kid I never really thought about how my Dad fought in the war he left as an elisted man and came back a Major all of the promotions in the field under fire, pretty amazing

They were a great generation

[chappy]

"The Greatest Generation" by Brokaw was a pretty decent read if I recall, been awhile since I read it. Had some compelling WWII stories.

[Ghost]

Wow, lots of interesting stuff. One of my grandfathers went out to rebuild Pearl after the war started. The other was in that wacky Navy Special Engineering group that did all those "weird weapons" and other things you see on the Military Channel and such, like the human-pickup system for snatching guys off the ground with a moving aircraft. I think they did that particular stuff for retrieving guys setting up weather stations on ice floes, to help combat the subs in the Atlantic.

My father in law is a great guy--he flew Corsairs off the new Lex in the Navy. Had several get busted up, including one that flipped on landing. He was one of seven brothers in the service. Everybody went somewhere overseas to fight, except the oldest, who was an electrician. I think they all probably gave him a lot of $hit for his cushy stateside post to New Mexico. Until years later that is. Turns out he wired the Trinity tower.

[Cuda]

I was born in Subic Bay Phillipines while the Navy Seabees were building it. Mom said she hated to see the US give that base away, because she remembered how hard the men worked to build that harbor. Dad was stationed on an oiler, that kept the other ships refueled.

Before Subic Bay, dad was stationed in Pearl Harbor, where my older sister was born, before Hawaii was a state. Once dad was out on maneuvers for a month or two, and didn't tell mom where he was going. He never told her until he saw it on 60 minutes about 40 years later. He was running a picket around Antiwetok Atol, when the US tested the first hydrogen bomb.

I tell mom that's why I'm crazy. That was about when I was concieved. I told mom I couldn't help but be crazy, because I have radio active blood. :wink:

[Cuda]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC6MnwknfmU