If anyone’s interested, Sabaton did a song about this incident. It’s called No Bullets Fly.

I saw part of the interview with the pilot, and he commented that “It was just like shooting at a parachute for me, I couldn’t do it”. Interesting, and truly noble, a reasoning.

Twice, Stigler tried to get Brown to land his plane at a German airfield and surrender or divert to nearby neutral Sweden where he and his crew would receive medical treatment but be interned and sit out the remainder of the war. Brown and the crew of the B-17 didn’t understand what Stigler was trying to mouth and gesture to them and so flew on. Stigler then flew near Brown’s plane in a formation on the bombers port side wing as Stigler knew the German anti aircraft units would recognize a German plane and not fire upon it or the formation, thus escorted the damaged B-17 over the coast until they reached open water, where he departed with a salute.