Neat WWII story. When a Bf-109 spared a stricken B-17.

CobraBob

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That was an amazing and great story/video! Thanks for posting it. Great that the two one day got to meet each other, and ultimately become good friends.
 

Mojo88

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Saw that a few years back. Great story. Very honorable German pilot.
 

MFE

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Some documentarians actually arranged a meeting of the two pilots a while back. Can you even imagine?
 

Double"O"

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Read the story several years ago...awesome stuff

Professional courtesy at its finest
 

coposrv

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I watched this a few days ago. What an amazing story.


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VenomousDSG

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It's an amazing story. Makes you think about other things though. Would you shoot down an enemy aircraft in that situation?

It sounds heartless, but i would of lit it up without a seconds thought. Imagine how many more missions that pilot went on bombing other targets, killing more of his countrymen, etc. Reminds me of the movie Saving Private Ryan where they let that German soldier go after he just killed one of their men. Only to kill another half dozen more Americans later on. With enemies during war, you shouldn't take chances.
 
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James Snover

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Guys, this wasn't compassion. The 109 pilot took a look at the B-17, and figured, "Those guys will never make it back to base. Why waste a bullet on them?" His opinion, was, naturally, based on what a similar amount of damage to a German aircraft would have caused.

After the war, when the Germans and Japanese got a chance to take a real look at American aircraft, they were all amazed at how much thought had been put into the concept of "survivability." The Japanese Zero, for example, was a one-hit, one-kill airplane. IF you could hit it. But if you did, it was going down. The Germans all had far superior cannon compared to the Browning 50-cals most US aircraft had. Better range, far more destructive. But if it jammed the pilot couldn't clear it. Our planes, with eight .50's, could toss tons of lead at the enemy, and the pilot could usually clear a jam in-flight, but they didn't usually jam. It was inferior to the German cannons, but hey, we had eight of them, per plane, and they were reliable. And we built our planes with armor plated seat back-rests and rubber-lined self-sealing fuel tanks.
 

Sn95Snake

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Amazing story. At the end of the day it shows that regardless what side you are on we are all just humans.
 

Snagged

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Guys, this wasn't compassion. The 109 pilot took a look at the B-17, and figured, "Those guys will never make it back to base. Why waste a bullet on them?" His opinion, was, naturally, based on what a similar amount of damage to a German aircraft would have caused.

After the war, when the Germans and Japanese got a chance to take a real look at American aircraft, they were all amazed at how much thought had been put into the concept of "survivability." The Japanese Zero, for example, was a one-hit, one-kill airplane. IF you could hit it. But if you did, it was going down. The Germans all had far superior cannon compared to the Browning 50-cals most US aircraft had. Better range, far more destructive. But if it jammed the pilot couldn't clear it. Our planes, with eight .50's, could toss tons of lead at the enemy, and the pilot could usually clear a jam in-flight, but they didn't usually jam. It was inferior to the German cannons, but hey, we had eight of them, per plane, and they were reliable. And we built our planes with armor plated seat back-rests and rubber-lined self-sealing fuel tanks.

That is very interesting thing to take into consideration. And I know there are a lot of redundancies built into the planes nowadays but it's nice to see that ideology has a long rooted past. Are the modern air forces of the respected countries continuing on with their typical doctrine of building planes or have they taken a new approach?>
 

blk02edge

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Guys, this wasn't compassion. The 109 pilot took a look at the B-17, and figured, "Those guys will never make it back to base. Why waste a bullet on them?" His opinion, was, naturally, based on what a similar amount of damage to a German aircraft would have caused.

After the war, when the Germans and Japanese got a chance to take a real look at American aircraft, they were all amazed at how much thought had been put into the concept of "survivability." The Japanese Zero, for example, was a one-hit, one-kill airplane. IF you could hit it. But if you did, it was going down. The Germans all had far superior cannon compared to the Browning 50-cals most US aircraft had. Better range, far more destructive. But if it jammed the pilot couldn't clear it. Our planes, with eight .50's, could toss tons of lead at the enemy, and the pilot could usually clear a jam in-flight, but they didn't usually jam. It was inferior to the German cannons, but hey, we had eight of them, per plane, and they were reliable. And we built our planes with armor plated seat back-rests and rubber-lined self-sealing fuel tanks.
Then why did the german pilot escort the B17 to help avoid AA fire...?
 

MFE

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Guys, this wasn't compassion. The 109 pilot took a look at the B-17, and figured, "Those guys will never make it back to base. Why waste a bullet on them?" His opinion, was, naturally, based on what a similar amount of damage to a German aircraft would have cause.
You obviously haven't taken even 4 seconds to learn anything about this particular story.
 

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