
Purchase
An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II
Berkley
December 2013
On Sale: December 9, 2013
400 pages ISBN: 0425252868 EAN: 9780425252864 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
Four days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American
bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its
controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded
or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly, a sleek, dark
shape pulled up on the bomber’s tail—a German Messerschmitt
fighter. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to
destroy the American bomber in 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.
This is the true story of the two pilots whose lives
collided in the skies that day—the American—2nd Lieutenant
Charlie Brown, a former farm boy from West Virginia who came
to captain a B-17—and the German—2nd Lieutenant Franz
Stigler, a former airline pilot from Bavaria who sought to
avoid fighting in World War II.
A Higher Call follows both Charlie and Franz’s harrowing
missions. Charlie would face takeoffs in English fog over
the flaming wreckage of his buddies’ planes, flak bursts so
close they would light his cockpit, and packs of enemy
fighters that would circle his plane like sharks. Franz
would face sandstorms in the desert, a crash alone at sea,
and the spectacle of 1,000 bombers each with eleven guns,
waiting for his attack.
Ultimately, Charlie and Franz would stare across the frozen
skies at one another. What happened between them, the
American 8th Air Force would later classify as “top secret.”
It was an act that Franz could never mention or else face a
firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both
Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they
would search for one another, a last mission that could
change their lives forever.
No awards found for this book.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|