Downed Pilot Bluffed Way Past Gestapo

William F. Middledorf, 87, a retired Air Force colonel who as a downed pilot in German-occupied France in World War II spent weeks masquerading as a deaf and mute Frenchman to evade capture, died Feb. 16 at Capital Hospice in Arlington County. He had lung cancer.

His wartime account was featured in "Escape and Evasion: 17 True Stories of Downed Pilots Who Made It Back" (1973), written and edited by Jimmy W. Kilbourne.

On Aug. 15, 1943, Col. Middledorf was an Army Air Forces second lieutenant and B-17 pilot engaged in a bombing run when his plane came under attack by German fliers and collided in midair with another Allied "Flying Fortress." He and his crew bailed out 25,000 feet over northern France.

Col. Middledorf was separated from his crew during the parachute drop and landed in a cornfield. A French woman waved him into a farmhouse and gave him civilian clothes, which he was initially reluctant to wear. He said he feared he would be shot as a spy if captured.

He was given falsified identification papers and a medical slip attesting that he was deaf and mute. The pretense was needed to explain why an otherwise hale young "French" man was not in a labor or concentration camp, according to Kilbourne.

During the next few weeks, French resistance leaders guided Col. Middledorf and a downed Canadian pilot in the direction of the Pyrenees, the mountain region separating France and neutral Spain. They eventually hopped a train, which hastened the trip but was risky because they were riding in plain sight of Gestapo agents.

One Gestapo agent seemed to become too suspicious, prompting the resistance leader on the train to flash a straight razor.

"If he comes back, I'll take care of him," the man said.

The German did not return. The Allied fliers made their way across the Spanish border on foot but were arrested by a Spanish sentry and interned in a French Red Cross home.

"They had sentries at this place, but they didn't seem too alert -- security wasn't too tight," Col. Middledorf said. He and the Canadian slipped into town and called the British consulate after the American consulate did not answer. The British officials came to their aid and took them to Gibraltar, the British territory at the southern tip of Spain. From there, they were flown to England.

William Frank Middledorf was born in Lafayette, Ind., and received a bachelor's degree in military science from the University of Maryland during his Air Force career.

Among his post-World War II assignments was serving as a B-52 pilot and bomb squadron commander in the Strategic Air Command at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. He retired in 1970 from the Pentagon as a deputy division chief in the directorate of plans and spent the next 15 years as a Navy aircraft design specialist for the contractor Information Spectrum.

For the past 10 years, he had done accounting, sales and administrative work at the Mount Vernon Antique Center in Fairfax County. He had lived in the Alexandria section of Fairfax since 1965.

His marriage to Catherine Payne Middledorf ended in divorce.

Survivors include three children, Virginia Faucette of Potomac, James Middledorf of the Alexandria section of Fairfax and Robert Middledorf of Leesburg; a brother; and six grandchildren.