"'The best laid plans of mice and men,'" Barbara said. "Don't blame yourself, darling. It's what happens in war. Things seldom go according to plan. Now jump, so then I can!"
Reluctantly, Stephen went to the bomb bay door. Barbara nodded that yes, he had to do this.
"I love you!" he called out to her, then waited for her reply as he stood in the open door with a hand on his parachute rip cord.
"I love you, too!" Barbara said, then saw Stephen drop out into thin air.
Steadying the huge plane as best she could, Barbara then scrambled to the same bay door, grabbed hold of her chute's rip cord, and jumped.
As she fell into the sky, she could not see Stephen, just two of the 190-A/8s circling around her B-17 like vultures at carrion. Only when her chute opened and she began floating earthward did she see Stephen, and breathed a sigh of relief. His chute had opened, too.
The B-17 Barbara had flown and loved began a nose-dive almost the moment she fell free of it. She watched as it spun downward in a trail of thick, black smoke. Moments later, the two Nazi fighters came zooming down at Stephen. She held her breath and prayed they would not fire their machine guns at him.
To her surprise and relief, the two planes circled the sky around Stephen, but their pilots did not fire their guns. Floating earthward, she had time to think about the air war from both the Allied's and the enemy's side. She had heard many stories from both Air Force and RAF pilots who had been shot out of their planes over Germany or France and were spared after they bailed out.
It was a latter-day medieval chivalry among airmen on both sides that a victorious pilot did not fire on his less fortunate counterpart who had lost his plane. It was as if they hoped, if and when the boot was on the other foot, they would be treated with the same chivalry.
Most Nazi pilots followed this tradition, but it often could not be said for Japanese pilots who flew under a different code of honor in the Pacific.
Barbara almost felt admiration for Nazi fighter pilots because she had heard how Hitler had blamed them for not stopping Allied air raids over his cities. He punished them by making them refuel their planes after a mission and go back immediately at least three times, so they often flew four back-to-back combat missions a day.
Most Luftwaffe aces flew until they were killed, while America's top pilots could go home after 50 missions. And Hitler's reluctance to have more jet planes built until the autumn of 1944 probably cost him the air war.