Year 109 (CIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Palma and Tullus (or, less frequently, year 862 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 109 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
This article covers the 20 December 1943 incident between Charles Brown and his Allied aircrew and German fighter pilot Franz Stigler, whereby instead of shooting down Brown's crippled bomber, Stigler took a humanitarian stance and escorted the bomber to safety. The matter came to renewed light following media attention in the 1990s.
Charlie Brown was an American military pilot with United States Army Air Corps who was stationed in RAF Kimbolton, Great Britain and assigned to bomb targets in Nazi Germany. Franz Stigler was a veteran Luftwaffe fighter pilot with 28 kills.
On December 20, 1943, Brown was ordered to fly his B-17 Flying Fortress to bomb an aircraft factory near Bremen. After dropping the bombs, Brown's plane was attacked by eight German planes and anti-aircraft fire from the ground. His plane soon sustained heavy damage, and most of its crew members were wounded. Three of the plane's four engines were destroyed or damaged. Brown believed that his gunners destroyed two enemy planes, but after that he blacked out and remembered waking up as the plane was flying low over a German airfield.
Augsburg eagle 109
Mottled battle dress
Lifting-off climbing up high
Der scwarm lined up abreast
Cutting through the ice cold air
On wings burdened with fuel and led
I'll fly and fight my rest will come
At wars end or when I am dead
The word Frei Jagd is given
Arm your guns and set the trim
Watch out for the escort
Now let the hunt begin
Where eagles fly eternal sky
The battlefield up high
Twist and strike my mount of knights
My faithful Augsburg eagle 109
White contrails across the sky
Target sighted 2'o clock high
Steadily on giant wings in a box formation
Now the killing begins
I comence a run-in from astern
Six barrel's of mind sound
Trailing smoke the bomber tuble
Spinning nose down first towards the ground
Out of ammunition
Low on fuel I break away
To whell down refuel and rearm
To intercept their second wave
Hanging by your prop I climb
Again in the sky
Way above those blooded fields