A German Pilot Pulled Along a Crippled B-17 -- Unaware it Would Define Both Their Lives

YouTube ^ | September 25, 2025 | Beyond The Battlefield

[HereInTheHeartland]

I read that book when I was about 10 years old in the late 60’s and was fascinated by it

[Yardstick]

One of the commenters in the video rlmorel linked said that Stigler’s commander had recently told his pilots that he would personally kill any of them who shot at men in parachutes. Stigler said he considered Ye Olde Pub to be essentially a parachute and that was part of the reason he didn’t shoot. So strong leadership in Stigler’s chain of command is part of the story too.

Another comment said that during the interaction between Stigler and Brown where Stigler saluted them and peeled off, Stigler raised his rosary to them. If true, then there’s also something to said here about Christendom and the moral decency it has given to Western civilization generally. At times it gets enacted by individuals even when they’ve gotten tangled up with the worst governing regimes.

[alexander_busek]

It wasn’t unusual for Luftwaffe to shoot Americans who had managed to bail out of their stricken B-17s in parachutes. This was widely considered bad form, but “all is fair in love and war” so the saying goes.

I explicitly mentioned the case of airmen parachuting out of their airplanes, and explained that taking them prisoner once they've landed on the ground would effectively remove them from combat for the rest of the war. Obviously, in such cases, it would be honorable to spare them, and to capture them.

BUT in the case of an entire air crew capable of "limping" back to their home airbase, it would not be the least bit dishonorable to simply shoot them down. If, as in this particular instance, in which the German fighter pilot tried to order them to surrender / land their aircraft on German territory, he was being extremely chivalrous.

Surprisingly, even after the American crew refused to surrender and land their aircraft, the German fighter pilot apparently allowed them to fly away. THAT crosses the line of "chivalrousness" and enters "dereliction of duty" territory.

Regards,

[one guy in new jersey]

The German pilot seems to have drawn an inappropriate analogy to the parachute courtesy/exception. To the benefit of the US airmen, and in the service of charity.

He may have been punished but likely not excessively.

“Don’t do that again, Franz.”

[Vaduz]

Code of conduct indeed

[Freedom4US]

It’s pretty tough sledding to ascribe attributes of “honor” in wartime. Maybe to individuals.

Without putting too fine a point on it, the Germans gave us unrestricted submarine warfare (widely considered unsporting), chemical weapons like Mustard gas, Phosgene, Sarin, and Tabun, and their early physics research spurred the Brits and the Americans to develop atomic weapons, just in case they were on to something. Von Braun’s V2 weapons raining down on London could have turned out a lot different, if the Nazis hadn’t been such idiots and kicked out all those longhairs.