Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Franz Stigler, a combat veteran with 22 kills o his record, , escorted the heavily damaged Ameircan B-17 Ye Old Pub out of German airspace rather than shoot it down.
Stigler had shot down two B-17s prior to this incident, but in lining up to shoot down the heavily damaged plane he noticed that its tail gunner took no effort to shoot at him and in flying closer he could see through holes in the fuselage that the aircrew were attempting to save the lives of wounded crewmates. His commanding officer, Gustav Rödel, had earlier told his squadron that "If I hear of one of you shooting a man in a parachute, I'll shoot you myself!" and Stigler determined that this would have amounted to the same thing. He motioned to the pilot, Charles Brown, to fly towards Sweden, but Brown didn't comprehend and instead kept on to the United Kingdom, and Stigler in turn escorted it out of German airspace.
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Stigler kept the act to himself, as he would have been court martialed for it. Brown did report the incident to his superiors, who kept it secret. Brown's superiors had threatened his men if they landed in a neutral country.
Brown and Stigler met after the war many years later and became friends. They both died in 2008. Stigler, who didn't tell anyone of the incident until Brown revealed it many years later, immigrated to Canada and entered the lumber industry in Vancouver. Brown retired from the Air Force in 1965.
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The U-850 was sunk by aircraft from the U.S. escort carrier Boque.
