A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II
by Adam Makos, Larry Alexander
Why You'll Love This
A German ace had an American bomber dead in his sights — and chose to do something that neither side would have believed possible.
- Great if you want: true wartime stories that challenge everything you think you know
- The experience: gripping and emotionally layered — builds steadily toward a stunning payoff
- The writing: Makos weaves dual biographies with the tight pacing of a thriller
- Skip if: you prefer analysis over personal narrative in your WWII reading
About This Book
In December 1943, a crippled American B-17 limped through German airspace with a devastated crew and almost no chance of survival. What happened next—when a German Messerschmitt ace pulled alongside that bomber—defies every expectation war history tends to set. Adam Makos and Larry Alexander tell the true story of two young pilots on opposite sides of a brutal conflict whose paths crossed in a moment that neither man could fully explain for decades afterward. It's a story about what soldiers choose to do when no one is watching, and what those choices cost them long after the war ends.
What distinguishes this book is how thoroughly Makos and Alexander build both men as full human beings before placing them in the sky together. The narrative moves between two cultures, two languages, and two very different roads to war, making the eventual collision feel inevitable and earned rather than dramatic shorthand. The prose is clean and propulsive, the research deep without ever turning academic. Rather than leaning on the encounter itself as a gimmick, the authors use it as a window into questions of conscience, courage, and the quietly complicated nature of honor under impossible circumstances.