A Higher Call: The Incredible True Story of Heroism and Chivalry During the Second World War

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The final section of the book is how the two men eventually met and became fast friends until their deaths in 2008. Notably, though fifty years had passed since the end of WWII, once this story became public, Franz Stigler began receiving hate mail, presumably from Germans who felt that he should have blown Charlie and his crew out of the sky. Additionally, I learned a great deal of new information from this book, and have a better idea what it might have been like to be part of a B-17bomber crew, or what it took to become an Ace in the Luftwaffe, without caving in to the incredible pressures exerted by Goerring, or the Gestapo.

So many things had to go just right and the timing always had to line up, or this book would never have existed. He piloted a B-17 and a B-24 in WWII and met Adolf Galland after the war at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum years ago.

He became a decorated pilot who led three squadrons of pilots, about 40 men, against a thousand American bombers covering a hundred miles at over six miles up.

The author follows Stigler through his war and how he became a fighter pilot and eventually to fly the ME-262 jet fighter in the closing days of the war. Adam has written a stunning, eye-opening, and breathtaking story of the lives of WWII pilots from both sides of the European Theater, and I dare say his is probably the most complete and best accounting I have ever read, especially from the German fighter pilot's side. This is the first book I have read from a German viewpoint and it has opened my eyes to a whole new history of WW2.

Franz transferred to Bf 109 fighter aircraft upon learning of the loss of his brother August, who died piloting a bomber shot down over the English Channel. He flew 487 combat missions, was wounded four times, and was shot down seventeen times, four by enemy fighters, four by ground fire, and nine times by gunners on American bombers.

When the war was over, both men went on with their lives, sometimes thinking about each other and the odds that the other might had survived. It was very difficult to put down even though I had other priorities; I couldn't wait to pick it up again. Read all In the summer of 1878, refugees from the Memphis epidemic came to Chattanooga to escape the ravages of yellow fever. But when he caught up with Charlie’s plane, he could see it was missing most of a rudder, and through the numerous holes, he could see the injured crew members trying to patch each other up. he continued half-hearted and witnessed the hell that the people were going through due to the greed of Hitler and Goering.Charlie Brown, the young American of the limping bird, knows that he and his crew are living on borrowed time when the unimaginable happens. For example in telling the story of Stigler’s service in North Africa, the sand, bad food and probably more importantly the comradeship between pilots and their crew chiefs/mechanics is well drawn.