A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World W ar II
Adam Makos, Larry Alexander
Language: English
Pages: 400
ISBN: 0425255735
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
THE NEW YORK TIMES AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
December, 1943: A badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber’s tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler—and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger...
What happened next would defy imagination and later be called “the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.”
The U.S. 8th Air Force would later classify what happened between them as “top secret.” It was an act that Franz could never mention for fear of facing a firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search the world for each other, a last mission that could change their lives forever.
INCLUDES PHOTOS
Hong Kong 1941-45: First Strike in the Pacific War (Campaign, Volume 263)
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
The Secret History of the Blitz
The Care and Management of Lies
A Bridge Too Far: The Classic History of the Greatest Battle of World War II
shouted, “As if the head of the Air Force was not aware of that!” Luetzow did not break his stone-face composure. So Goering reverted to taunting. He told Luetzow that the real problem was the fighter pilots’ cowardice. Germany needs braver men, he said, “eager for a crack at the enemy,” to challenge the bombers nose to nose. Luetzow retorted, “And you, sir, have simply ignored the existence of four-engined bombers completely. You’ve given us no new aircraft, no new weapons.” “Enough!” Goering
to reveal spring’s green pastures. An ugly war has never been fought in a more beautiful place, he thought. Blistering along at 475 miles per hour, the flight blasted over the female flak gunners who manned the guns around the airfield. The pilots called them “Fighter Dolls.” The formation whistled over battered villages where women, children, and old men scurried to catch a glimpse. They passed over columns of German refugees, some of the nation’s two million homeless who now camped in villages
Franz met Galland by his plane and told him where the ambulance had taken Steinhoff. Galland jumped into his BMW and raced to the hospital, alone. Farther down the flight line, the Count, in tears, asked his mechanic where they had laid Steinhoff’s body. The mechanic said that Steinhoff was somehow still alive, which sent the Count into a frenzy. He sprinted for the alert shack, trembling at what he knew he needed to do. Franz had heard the story from Roedel, of the Count’s promise to Steinhoff,
want to leave. DURING THE FIRST week of September 1942, Franz found himself sitting on a lonely bench at the far end of the airfield, where Ju-52 transports delivered the unit’s supplies. Franz had his orders: hitch a ride on a transport to Libya, then fly to Sicily, then Italy. From there he would take a train to Germany. Every so often an old sergeant emerged to tell Franz that a Ju-52 was due any minute. The wind sock hung limp. There were no eager rookies checking in for a great adventure,
their base. Pinky asked Charlie if his dad was still living. Charlie said he was. “Do you think he’s ever seen you fly?” Pinky asked. Charlie admitted he had no clue. He said he had tried calling his dad but could not reach him. Secretly, Charlie wanted his father and everyone else in Weston to see him and know he was no longer the farm boy bringing in the cows, no longer the janitor scrubbing toilets, no longer a PFC in the back ranks of the local Guard unit. He was a B-17 pilot. With an
