To German fighter pilot Franz Stigler, the B-17 was not only helpless but doomed to crash.

Killing defenseless pilots dangling from parachutes or floating in life rafts was considered bad form. The code said a pilot could be killed by surprise with no warning from behind while flying his airplane, but not after he was defenseless and had bailed out. His personal code of ethics was based on his Catholic upbringing plus a romantic ideal left over from World War I that fighter pilots were knights-of-the-sky, responsible for not killing their enemy once the enemy had been vanquished. The majority of the book deals with Franz Stigler, a German fighter pilot and prewar flight instructor who survives the war after 480+ combat sorties over Africa, Italy, and Germany. This is the story of that strange encounter, told from both sides.

The nearly destroyed B-17 beat the odds and miraculously made it back to England, and the German air-ace went back to knocking down other Allied bombers. In late December 1943, a badly shot-up B-17 bomber was escorted to safety away from Germany by a German fighter pilot. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would seek out one another and reunite.A Higher Call An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II It was an act that Franz could never mention or else face a firing squad. What happened between them, the American 8th Air Force would later classify as 'top secret'. This is the true story of the two pilots whose lives collided in the skies that day - the American - 2nd Lieutenant Charlie Brown and the German - 2nd Lieutenant Franz Stigler.Ī Higher Call follows both Charlie and Franz's harrowing missions and gives a dramatic account of the moment when they would stare across the frozen skies at one another.

Suddenly a German Messerschmitt fighter pulled up on the bomber's tail - the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber with the squeeze of a trigger. At its controls was a twenty-one-year-old pilot. This instant Sunday Times bestseller tells the story of two fighter pilots whose remarkable encounter during the Second World War became the stuff of legend.įive days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany.

A higher call