Four days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Suddenly, a German Messerschmitt fighter pulled up on his tail. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber in the squeeze of a trigger. What happened next would later be called 'the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.'

This is the true story of the two pilots whose lives collided in the skies that day: 2nd Lieutenant Charlie Brown, a farm boy from West Virginia, and 2nd Lieutenant Franz Stigler, a former airline pilot from Bavaria who sought to avoid fighting in World War II.

What happened between them was later classified 'top secret.' It was an act that Franz could never mention or else face a firing squad. It was an encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years...