Charles Lester "Charlie" Brown (October 24, 1922 – November 24, 2008) was a United States Army Air Forces pilot during World War II.

Born on October 24, 1922, in Weston, West Virginia as the youngest of six children to a family of farmers, Charlie was interested in flying planes from an early age.

[2] Brown's damaged, straggling bomber was spotted by Germans on the ground, including Franz Stigler (then an ace with 27 victories), who was refueling and rearming at an airfield.

He soon took off in his Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6 (which had an American .50 BMG bullet embedded in its radiator, risking the engine overheating) and quickly caught up with Brown's plane.

Twice Stigler tried to persuade Brown to land his plane at a German airfield and surrender, or divert to nearby neutral Sweden, where he and his crew would receive medical treatment and be interned for the remainder of the war.

He then flew near Brown's plane in close formation on the bomber's port side wing, so that German anti-aircraft units would not target it, and escorted the damaged B-17 across the coast until they reached open water.