In a recent Profile of Valor titled “Mercy Among Mortal Enemies,” I retold the remarkable story of B-17 pilot Charles “Charlie” Brown and German Fighter Ace Ludwig Franz Stigler. When Brown’s plane was badly damaged over Germany, Stigler escorted him to the North Sea coast rather than shooting him down, sparing the lives of the B-17 crew.

This encounter between Brown and Stigler was not the only time German fighter pilots declined to shoot down a badly damaged American aircraft.

Our friends at North Carolina’s Veterans History Museum recently hosted an event for 102-year-old Lt Col Edwin “Ed” Cottrell (USAF, Ret.), whose life was also spared by German fighter pilots during World War II.

Ed was born in Oklahoma but raised in Pennsylvania. His father, Elmer Cottrell, was a World War I Army Veteran, so service was in his genes. As a freshman in college, he met his wife Millie, but their future plans, like many in that era, were put on hold by World War II.

In Ed’s own words:

My military career began in 1941 during my sophomore year at Slippery Rock State Teachers College in Western Pennsylvania. Fearful of war, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the creation of the Civilian Pilot Training Program at colleges across the country to boost the number of people who could fly aircraft in case of a military emergency. I’d always wanted to be a pilot, so I enrolled and got 30 hours in a Piper Cub and my pilot’s license.

The emergency FDR anticipated came at Pearl Harbor, and a few months later, I got my draft notice and joined the Army Air Corps. I went to flight school in Chico, California, flying the Vultee Vibrator, the PT-13. It shook all over, but it was a very reliable plane. I was assigned to Luke Field in Phoenix, Arizona, for advanced training, flying the AT-6, the Texan. We had five hours of flying in the P-40 Fighter.

After graduating from flight school, then 2d Lt Cottrell took advantage of pre-deployment leave, went back to Slippery Rock, PA, and married Millie. They had two weeks together before his orders took him to Wendover Field in Utah.

Ed says:

At Wendover, I caught a glimpse of the most beautiful aircraft I’d ever seen. The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was bigger, more rugged, and more robust than any fighter I’d known. Nicknamed the “Jug” — either because it looked like a milk bottle when stood on its nose or because it was a “Juggernaut” in combat — the P-47 dwarfed other single-engine planes. With eight .50-caliber machine guns and an enormous fuselage, the Thunderbolt could both deliver and absorb a lot of damage. We got a lot of aerial gunnery experience, did a lot of night flying, formation flying, dive-bombing, and strafing runs.

Next, Ed’s squadron shipped off to England in 1944 and was immediately sent to France, where he was assigned to Ninth Air Force, 48th Fighter Group, 493rd Fighter Squadron, at Cambrai Air Field, just outside of Paris. In September 1944, Ed’s squadron was moved to St. Trond, Belgium, which he describes as “a beautiful airfield with 10,000-foot runways.” His missions were primarily low-altitude strafing and bombing military targets such as tanks and supply trains. The 493rd lost many pilots to flak and fighters.

On December 6th, the weather was very bad. The 9th Army was in close pursuit of the German military. We were called on a very, very rainy, cloudy day with no more than 200 feet visibility, to go skip-bomb a soccer field where the Americans were on one side and the Germans were on the other side. There was pretty much a stalemate.

I flew wingman to our squadron commander, Major Latiolais. He led 12 of us on this mission where we were 200 feet above the ground, flying at over 300 miles an hour, until we came to the little town of Jullich, Germany. We were required to come in over the American troops, maybe 30 or 40 yards across the field, to skip-bomb the Germans on the other side. We made two or three passes, got a lot of ground fire, and were successful in dropping our bombs. The Americans were able to move forward and push the Germans back.

Upon the return to our base, we found out that almost every plane had a lot of bullet holes in it where the small ground fire had hit the planes. The P-47 was such a good plane, that didn’t faze it at all. Our 493rd Fighter Squadron got the Presidential Citation for that operation. Major Latiolais did a tremendous job of leading us on that mission, where some of the time we were on instruments and some of the time actually at treetop level at 300MPH.

It was on December 17 that Ed had his closest encounter with enemy fighters.

We were on a mission to locate some tiger tanks, which were just east of Cologne in a wooded area, on their way to Bastogne. We found out the Germans had broken through, and the Battle of the Bulge was taking place. We located the tiger tanks in the woods and went down on a dive-bombing mission. I was the second plane down. We dropped our bombs. As we pulled up, we ran into a group of ME-109 German Luftwaffe planes.

On our pullout, on our way up, I noticed an ME [Messerschmitt]-109 coming down at one o'clock toward my squadron commander. I called to him that there was a bandit at one o'clock. The 109 shifted a little bit, and the next thing I knew, I felt this big blast and a 20mm cannon apparently hit my plane. All of a sudden, there was oil all over the windshield, and I couldn’t see anything. I was on an upward slope. I opened the canopy in preparation of bailing out, got on the radio to my commander and said I’d been hit and was heading west and going to fly the plane as far as I could. The plane sort of kicked out but it chugged along at about 120 miles an hour with oil flying out all over my windshield. I managed to climb to 2,000 feet, engine misfiring, almost stalling out.

There must have been 35 or 40 109s in the air. I looked out on one side, and there was a German 109. I looked out on the other side, and there was another 109. They throttled back and crisscrossed behind me, and I thought I was going to be shot down. But they didn’t fire. Instead, they came up and pulled in right next to me and we flew formation. They flew with me back to the bomb line, where they used their thumbs and first fingers to make a little circle and peeled off. That was their signal they were leaving me, ‘Good luck and God bless’ without shooting me down.

Still surprised that the two pilots did not shoot him out of the sky, he refocused on assessing where he was and how to get back to the nearest Allied airfield. And adding yet another miraculous event to his day, Ed notes, “Just as my plane was ready to touch down at the airfield, the engine froze, and the prop stopped. I had to make a dead-stick landing and rolled to a stop.”

Once out of his battered Thunderbolt, Ed says: “I kissed the ground because I was a very fortunate person. I could’ve been shot down. A lot of things could’ve happened. But I came out the best anyone could have under that situation. My crew chief told me I lost eight of the 18 cylinders. Thank the Lord for that Pratt & Whitney engine.”

It was later that day that Ed learned: “I lost my roommate, 2d Lt Art Sommers. He got shot down and killed on that same mission. He was just a great guy, and I miss him to this day.”

It was not Ed’s last mission deep into enemy territory. On one of those later missions, another roommate, 2d Lt Ted Smith, was hit by flak, and his P-47 crashed. Ed recalls him saying over the radio moments before impact, “Tell my wife goodbye.”

In May 1945, Ed recalls: “I flew my last mission, my 65th mission, out of Nuremberg. Then, the war was over in June. Those people who had 65 or more missions, if they wanted to, could go home. If not, they would be going with the 48th Fighter Group, which was going to Japan. I chose to go home because I had a little daughter that I hadn’t seen. I was discharged on July 24.”

Ed, whose post-war career was as a college educator and administrator, kept his hand in the national defense game by joining the Air Force Reserves. He served for almost another 30 years.

Like most combat Veterans, Ed has been reluctant to speak much about his experience of World War II. “For a long time, I didn’t talk about the war,” he says. “I wanted to forget it.” However, that changed at a squadron reunion 20 years ago.

Someone said, “We never talked about our military experience, but maybe we need to because this country needs to get back to what it was back during World War II when the country was in trouble and everybody pitched in. There was no bickering and no questions about what we were going to do.” Our country was in trouble [during World War II], and whatever people were asked to do, that’s what they did. If you weren’t able to join the fighting, you worked in the factories. You took care of helping each other out. That’s what this country needs to do now.

He concludes, “That’s why I talk about what we went through in order to preserve the freedom of our country.”

And that is what makes Ed Cottrell a celebrated member of the Greatest Generation.

Ed would never learn why those enemy pilots spared his life, but he says, “If I were in the same situation and there was a 109 in trouble, I would not shoot a crippled aircraft down. It’s just honor that you don’t do that, there is honor among pilots.”

I suspect a factor in the German pilots’ decision was that they, like many Germans as the end of the War was imminent, were convicted that they and their country were on the wrong side of history and humanity.

Ed and Millie celebrated their 76th anniversary in 2020. The love of his life, who fondly referred to him as “Cotty,” died at age 99 that year. He now resides in the mountains of Hendersonville, North Carolina, and his daughters Susan and Mary and other family live nearby.

Three months ago, the French Consul-General awarded Ed the French Legion of Honor, France’s highest decoration, for helping to liberate France.

You can watch Ed tell his story in the Witness to War series and read about him in Janis Allen’s book, We Shall Come Home Victorious.

Lt Col Edwin Cottrell: Your example of valor — a humble American Patriot defending Liberty for all above and beyond the call of duty, and in disregard for the peril to your own life — is eternal.

“Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Live your life worthy of his sacrifice.

(Read more Profiles of Valor here.)

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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