Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler had the opportunity to shoot down the crippled bomber but did not do so, and instead escorted it over and past German-occupied territory so as to protect it.

[7] For this mission, the crew of Ye Olde Pub (B-17F serial number 42-3167)[8] consisted of: Brown's B-17 began its ten-minute bomb run at 8,320 m (27,300 ft) with an outside air temperature of −60 °C (−76 °F).

As the damage slowed the bomber, Brown was unable to remain with his formation and fell back as a straggler, a position in which he came under sustained enemy attacks.

[16] Brown's struggling B-17 was now attacked by over a dozen enemy fighters (a combination of Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s) of JG 11 for more than ten minutes.

[19] The morphine syrettes carried onboard had also frozen, complicating first-aid efforts by the crew, while the radio was destroyed and the bomber's exterior heavily damaged.

[19] 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.

"[16] 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.

[16] Brown managed to fly the 250 mi (400 km) across the North Sea and land his plane at RAF Seething, home of the 448th Bomb Group and at the postflight debriefing informed his officers about how a German fighter pilot had let him go.

Someone asked him if he had any memorable missions during World War II; he thought for a minute and recalled the story of the Bf 109 escort and pilot's salute.

When they spoke on the phone, Stigler described his plane, the escort and salute, confirming everything that Brown needed to hear to know he was the German fighter pilot involved in the incident.

[24] In January 2019, a surviving B-17 (serial number 44-8543) operated by Erickson Aircraft Collection of Madras, Oregon, was repainted as Ye Olde Pub.