Ye Olde Pub, Franz Stigler, and the Crippled B Seventeen a German Fighter Pilot Refused to Shoot Down Two Days Before Christmas

On December 20, 1943, German fighter ace Franz Stigler had a battle-damaged American B-17 Flying Fortress dead in his gunsights and chose not to fire. Instead, he flew formation on the crippled bomber, nicknamed “Ye Olde Pub,” shielding it from anti-aircraft fire and escorting it out over the North Sea before saluting its pilot and turning for home. Four decades later, that pilot, Charlie Brown, tracked Stigler down, and the two former enemies became lifelong friends.

What happened to Ye Olde Pub on December 20, 1943?

The Eighth Air Force was running daylight bombing raids deep into Germany, and the target that day was a Focke-Wulf plant at Bremen in the north. Daylight bombing meant flying without meaningful long-range fighter escort. The bombers defended themselves, packed into tight box formations so their .50-caliber machine guns could overlap and cover one another. The rule was simple: stay in the box, and the box protects you.

Into that formation climbed a 21-year-old commander named Charlie Brown, a farm boy from West Virginia flying his first mission as an aircraft commander. His B-17 carried the name “Ye Olde Pub” on the nose, and a crew of ten.

The flak over Bremen was a wall of steel. Ye Olde Pub was hit hard even before dropping her bombs. A shell knocked out the number two engine, and another crippled number four so it couldn’t make full power. With half her engines gone or failing, she fell out of formation, and the moment she left the protective overlap of the box, the German fighters came for her.

How badly was the B-17 damaged?

By some accounts, roughly fifteen German fighters, a mix of Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s, worked the bomber over in relays. The damage was catastrophic:

The Plexiglas nose was shattered
The hydraulics were shot out
The oxygen system was destroyed
The tail was half blown away
One gunner was killed, and nearly everyone else was wounded

Charlie Brown himself was hit and briefly blacked out at the controls, sending the Fortress into a spin toward the ground. Ironically, that spin saved the crew. The German pilots watching the bomber corkscrew down counted it as a kill and broke off, assuming no one could survive.

But Brown regained consciousness low to the ground, pulled the aircraft level, and got her flying again, barely. He pointed the nose west toward the North Sea and England, with almost no realistic chance of making it home.

Who was Franz Stigler?

At a nearby airfield sat Franz Stigler, an experienced German fighter pilot. He was no rookie. He had around 22 confirmed victories at that point, had flown in North Africa, and had lost his own brother, another pilot, earlier in the war.

Stigler had just landed, refueled, and rearmed. He needed one more kill to qualify for the Knight’s Cross, the highest honor a German pilot could earn. When he saw the shot-up B-17 wallowing overhead, low, slow, and alone, he took off and climbed after her. He slid in dead astern, the perfect firing position, with his thumb on the trigger and the easiest victory of his career in front of him.

Why didn’t Franz Stigler shoot down the B-17?

As Stigler closed in, he saw the aircraft clearly for what it was. He could see through the torn-open fuselage, see the tail gunner slumped dead over his guns, and see wounded, terrified men through the holes in the airframe.

In that moment, Stigler recalled the words of his old commanding officer in North Africa, a man named Roedel, who had warned him: if he ever caught Stigler shooting a man in a parachute, he would shoot Stigler himself. You are fighters first, last, and always. You fight with honor.

Stigler decided that firing on this helpless bomber was no different from shooting a defenseless man in a parachute. There was no honor in it, so he held his fire.

What did Franz Stigler do instead?

Stigler pulled up alongside Ye Olde Pub and flew formation on her wing. To Charlie Brown, wounded and fighting a dying airplane, it looked like a hallucination: an enemy fighter flying inches off his wingtip, close enough to see the pilot’s face.

Stigler tried to communicate with hand signals. He first pointed down, urging Brown to land in Germany and surrender so his crew would live. When Brown refused, Stigler pointed north toward Sweden, a neutral country a short hop away, where the crew would be interned but alive and their wounded treated. Brown, stubborn, kept the nose pointed at England.

So Stigler made his decision and stayed. He knew what Brown did not: the German coastline was ringed with anti-aircraft batteries, and a lone, low, straggling bomber was an easy target. But no flak crew would open fire on a formation with one of their own aces flying on the wing.

Stigler used his own aircraft as a shield, escorting the bomber across the German coast and out over the water, past the guns. Once they were over the open North Sea and clear, he looked over at Charlie Brown, saluted him, and peeled off for home.

What happened after the escort?

Stigler landed and said nothing. Letting an enemy bomber escape, and escorting it to safety, was treason, punishable by a firing squad. He kept the secret for decades.

Ye Olde Pub made it. On her two remaining good engines, she dragged herself across the North Sea and landed at an airfield in England, and Brown got every surviving crew member home. When he told intelligence officers about the German who refused to shoot, he was ordered to keep quiet. Command did not want it known that the enemy had shown mercy, fearing it would complicate how airmen felt about killing them. The story went into a drawer, and Brown returned to combat, but he never forgot the face on his wing.

How did Charlie Brown find Franz Stigler 40 years later?

For 40 years, the memory would not leave Charlie Brown. He raised a family, flew for the Air Force after the war, and retired to Florida, still haunted by the question of who the German pilot was and why he had done it.

In the late 1980s, Brown began searching. He wrote letters, combed through combat records, and placed a notice in a newsletter for former German fighter pilots, describing the date, the place, the crippled B-17, and the escort out to sea. He was looking, he wrote, for the man who saved his life.

In Canada, Franz Stigler, who had emigrated after the war and kept his own silence, opened that letter. To prove he was genuine, he described details that had never been published: the condition of the aircraft, the way Brown had waved him off, and the salute. It was unmistakably him.

What happened to Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler?

The two men spoke by phone, then met in person and embraced like brothers. They spent the rest of their lives as close friends, traveling together, telling the story publicly at last after half a century of silence, and vacationing with each other’s families. Brown said Stigler was like a member of his own family.

Remarkably, both men died in 2008, just a few months apart. In a memorial notice, one was described by the other’s family as a beloved brother.

Where can I read the full story?

The complete account is told in the book “A Higher Call” by Adam Makos and Larry Alexander, built on years of interviews with both men before they died. It remains the fullest and most detailed telling of the story.

Key Takeaways

On December 20, 1943, German ace Franz Stigler chose not to shoot down the crippled B-17 “Ye Olde Pub” during a raid on Bremen, Germany.
Stigler flew formation on the wounded bomber to shield it from coastal anti-aircraft fire, escorted it over the North Sea, saluted pilot Charlie Brown, and let it go.
The escape cost Stigler a likely Knight’s Cross and risked execution for treason, so he kept the story secret for decades.
Ye Olde Pub reached England, and Brown brought his surviving crew home despite catastrophic battle damage.
After a 40-year search, Brown found Stigler in the late 1980s; the two became lifelong friends and both died in 2008, months apart.