I sometimes hesitate to recommend certain books because they can be a chore to read. Adam Makos books are different. They read like novels and they always start out painless, maintain the reader’s interest and end with a reunion of the combatants. It is recipe for success. What happened next would defy imagination and later be called "the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II." Novak, Steve (February 23, 2019). "A tank rolled down the streets of Allentown, an homage to a 95-year-old World War II hero". lehighvalleylive.com . Retrieved February 28, 2019. Notable Alumni". Lycoming College. Archived from the original on November 20, 2022 . Retrieved November 20, 2022.

O'Sullivan, Michael (November 3, 2022). "Here are the movies everyone will be talking about this holiday season". Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 20, 2022 . Retrieved November 20, 2022. While this book is the story of the two pilots, Charlie Brown (yes that’s really his name) who was piloting the B-17 and Franz Stigler, who was flying the ME109, this narrative is mainly Stigler's story. At the time of the encounter Stigler was just a victory away from completing the requirements for being awarded a Knights Cross, one of Germany's highest awards for valor. Remarkably, Franz decides to let the B-17 go and even escorted through a flak belt until it reached the North Sea. While Mr. Makos tells both men’s story the majority of the narrative follows Lt Stigler. 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. Never a Nazi, Stigler is portrayed as a man who was fighting the good fight for a bad cause. A prewar Lufthansa pilot, he became civilian instructor pilot for the Luftwaffe, where he taught many of the men who flew with the Condor Legion in Spain. He was eventually dragooned into the Luftwaffe when he complained that he got no respect from the aviation cadets because he was a civilian.

Success!

The 2022 film, Devotion, is based on his 2015 book of the same title, which recounts the true story of a friendship between two U.S. Navy pilots in the Korean War. [9] Voices of the Pacific: untold stories from the Marine heroes of World War II. Berkley Books. 2013. ISBN 9780425257821.

Makos and Larry Alexander, who was the book’s impressive researcher and who assisted with the writing, have poetic ears and artistic eyes when it comes to describing the air battles fought. The gruesome scenes are visually stunning and the right words are poetic in their ability to make you feel the intensity of the horrific aerial duels. Based on numerous interviews over eight years with the principals, the author and researcher are also masters of getting into the flyers’ minds, detailing their thoughts, their fears, and their emotions with a literary sensibility and journalistic expertise. Unbelievably, this is Makos’s first book. What a formidable debut. The story is well told. Adam Makos presents the lives and fates of the American and the German pilots in parallel, as a joint fictionalized memoir, in third person narration. He spent some 8 years on interviewing the protagonists, researching, and finally writing the book. On one hand, there is an account of an American bomber crew who survived at both the mercy, grace, and self-sacrificing chivalry of their opponent. But theirs is the highlight side story tale, which brought this bio to life. If I could have given more than 5*****, I would have. This book was that good. it was so well written, yet the story could have written itself. It is something you usually read about in novels, but think, "This could not be for real." But yes, it was. I concerns two WWII pilots, Franz Stigler, a German and Charlie Brown, an American. Neither was political. Stigler was a young German born of devout Roman Catholic family in Bavaria who were avidly anti-Nazi and Charlie was the son of American farmers. Both were dedicated to their countries. One day, Charlie was bombing northern Germany when a score of German fighters appeared around him. he was strafed on all sides, and his plane was rapidly getting punched to pieces by all the bullets. Suddenly the German fighters were gone, and Charlie was just beginning to hope he could turn around and try and make it home when a lone German plane showed up on his right wing. Franz Stigler. At first Charlie thought "this is it" we are goners. but for some strange reason no shots were fires and the German pilot hung on their right wing as they turned towards the North Sea. He kept pointing and mouthing words which were intelligibly to the Americans, but Franz was trying to get them to go to Sweden, a 1/2 hours flight where they could be safe. But Charlie did not understand, not did he realize that the German gunners on the North Sea shore did not fire because they saw one of their own with the American plane and figured he was going to take them down over the water. But instead he escorted them farther out to a safe area and watched them turn toward England. Saying a prayer he returned to Germany. Neither plot knew the other and Franz knew he had to keep quiet or he could be shot. As the war drags on, Stigler’s ambition for glory wanes. He often gives the credit for airplanes he shoots down to young pilots in his squadron. Finally in the waning days of the war, he requests permission to join VG-44 and Adolf Galland in flying the ME-262. His story of the last days of the war is heart rending, esp when he gives in to the pleas of one of his young pilots, who really has no business flying such a high performance aircraft, and lets the young man fly a combat sortie. The young pilot crashes on landing, is horribly burned and eventually dies.Franz Stigler started flying gliders at age 12 and soloed in a bi-plane in 1933. He joined Lufthansa, becoming an Airline Captain, before joining the Luftwaffe in 1940. There, he became an instructor pilot, with one of his students being Gerhard Barkhorn, who would later become the second highest scoring Ace in history with over 300 victories. While ace records keepers might wonder where his score would be today since he claimed hardly any kills for years after sparing this one crew - that's the point! He clearly was in the company of ace 'giants' whose actual scores were public. For Mr. Stigler, such things were a shameful burden he avoided, and he refocused his job on keeping the rookies alive and competent for their own sakes, and the illusory glory of war was lost to his earlier overachieving self. 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…