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Two pistols. Twenty-eight bullets. One enemy aircraft.
On April 11, 1945, First Lieutenant Merritt Duane Francies spotted a German Fieseler Storch heading straight for five hundred American tanks near Dannenberg, Germany. If that spotter plane reached German lines, artillery coordinates would follow. The entire Fifth Armored Division was driving into a kill zone — and Francies had no guns on his tiny Piper L-4 Grasshopper. No radio to call fighters. No time to wait.
He had a .45 caliber pistol and a decision to make.
What followed at seven hundred feet above the German countryside — and what happened after he landed — is something the Army tried to recognize. But the paperwork disappeared. For twenty-two years, nobody came looking.
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