5 Miles Over Germany
from The People We Meet with Ty Bruner Hosted by Ty Bruner
December 20, 1943. Twenty-one-year-old Charlie Brown is five miles above Nazi Germany at the controls of a B-17 called Ye Olde Pub. It's his first mission as an aircraft commander. And it's going very, very badly. His bomber is crippled. One crewman is dead. Others are badly wounded. Most of the guns no longer work. The oxygen system is failing. Parts of the airplane are simply gone. And Charlie Brown is hundreds of miles from home. What happens next would stay with him for nearly fifty years. This is a story from World War II. But it isn't really a story about war. It's about what can happen when, in the middle of one of humanity's worst moments, one person makes a choice nobody expects. A story about enemies. A story about mercy. And ultimately, a story about why we matter to each other.
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Chapters
- 0:04 War Without Romance
- 1:34 The Frozen Mission
- 2:31 Ye Olde Pub Crew
- 4:53 Bremer Flak Trap
- 8:12 Bombs Away, Then Trouble
- 11:42 Fortress Falls Apart
- 14:48 A Miraculous Recovery
- 16:37 Franz Stiegler Appears
- 18:10 The Fighter’s Code
- 20:54 The Choice Not to Shoot
- 24:32 Escort to the Coast
- 28:23 Home at Last
- 30:49 Searching for the Pilot
- 32:44 Reunited at Last
- 34:13 From Enemies to Brothers
- 36:28 What Mercy Changes
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