[LASS Soaring] Good Fighter pilot Story

[Edwin Wilson]

Harold Jackson sent me this story. The story of Carr's bravery I thought 
it was worth passing along
Ed



Story!  Army Air Corps Pilot
    An interesting read for anyone who likes fighter pilot/plane stories.
 
        Fighter Ace Bruce Carr: The Legend
 
 Evading [the enemy] with A Dead Chicken around His Neck, Bruce Carr, a
 20-year-old American Fighter pilot in WWII, still hadn't decided how to
 cook it  Excellent without the Germans catching him. After carrying it 
for several
 days, and being as hungry as he was, he couldn't bring himself to eat it.
 In his mind, no meat was better than raw meat, so he threw it away.
 
 Resigning himself to what appeared to be his unavoidable fate. He turned
 in the direction of the nearest German airfield. Even POW's get to eat
 sometimes. And they aren't constantly dodging from tree to tree, ditch to
 culvert. And, he was exhausted.
 
 He was tired of trying to find cover where there was none. Carr hadn't
 realized that Czechoslovakian forests had no underbrush until, at the edge
 of the farm field, struggling out of his parachute he dragged it into the
 woods. During the times he had been screaming along at tree top level in
 his P-51 "Angels Playmate" the forests and fields had been nothing more
 than a green blur behind the Messerschmitt, Focke-Wulfs, trains and trucks
 he had in his sights. He never expected to find himself a pedestrian far
 behind enemy lines. The instant anti-aircraft shrapnel ripped into the
 engine he knew he was in trouble. Serious trouble.
 
 Clouds of coolant steam hissing through jagged holes in the cowling told
 Carr he was about to ride the silk elevator down to a long walk back to
 his squadron. A very long walk. This had not been part of the mission
 plan.
 
 Several years before, when 18-year-old Bruce Carr enlisted in the Army,
 in no way could he have imagined himself taking a walking tour of rural
 Czechoslovakia with Germans everywhere around him. When he enlisted, all
 he had just focused on flying airplanes - fighter airplanes.
 
 By the time he had joined the military, Carr already knew how to fly. He
 had been flying as a private pilot since 1939, soloing in a $25 Piper Cub
 his father had bought from a disgusted pilot who had left it lodged
 securely in the top of a tree. His instructor had been an Auburn, NY,
 native by the name of Johnny Bruns.
 
 "In 1942, after I enlisted, "as Bruce Carr remembers it, "we went to meet
 our instructors. I was the last cadet left in the assignment room and was
 nervous. Then the door opened and out stepped the man who was to be my
 military flight instructor. It was Johnny Bruns!
 
 We took a Stearman to an outlying field, doing aerobatics all the way;
 then he got out and soloed me. That was my first flight in the military.
 
 The guy I had in advanced training in the AT-6 had just graduated himself
 and didn't know a bit more than I did," Carr can't help but smile, as he
 remembers, which meant neither one of us knew anything. Zilch! After three
 or four hours in the AT-6, they took me and a few others aside, told us we
 were going to fly P-40s and we left for Tipton, Georgia."
 
 "We got to Tipton, and a lieutenant just back from North Africa kneeled on
 the P-40's wing, showed me where all the levers were, made sure I knew how
 everything worked, then said 'If you can get it started, go fly it' - just
 like that! I was 19 years old and thought I knew every thing. I didn't
 know enough to be scared. They didn't tell us what to do. They just said
 'Go fly,' so I buzzed every cow in that part of the state. Nineteen years
 old and with 1100 horsepower, what did they expect? Then we went
 overseas."
 
 By today's standards, Carr and that first contingent of pilots shipped to
 England were painfully short of experience. They had so little flight time
 that today they would barely have their civilian pilot's license. Flight
 training eventually  became more formal, but in those early days, their
 training had a hint of fatalistic Darwinism to it: if they learned fast
 enough to survive, they were ready to move on to the next step. Including
 his 40 hours in the P-40 terrorizing Georgia, Carr had less than 160 hours
 total flight time when he arrived in England.
 
 His group in England was to be the pioneering group that would take the
 Mustang into combat, and he clearly remembers his introduction to the
 airplane. "I thought I was an old P-40 pilot and the P-51B would be no big
 deal. But I was wrong! I was truly impressed with the airplane. REALLY
 impressed! It flew like an airplane. I FLEW a P-40, but in the P-51 - I
 WAS PART OF the airplane and it was part of me. There was a world of
 difference."
 
 When he first arrived in England the instructions were, "This is a P-51.
 Go fly it. Soon, we'll have to form a unit, so fly." A lot of English
 cows were buzzed. On my first long-range mission, we just kept climbing,
 and I'd never had an airplane above about 10,000 feet before. Then we were
 at 30,000 feet and I couldn't believe it! I'd gone to church as a kid, and
 I knew that's where the angels were and that's when I named my airplane
 "Angels Playmate."
 
 Then a bunch of Germans roared down through us, and my leader immediately
 dropped tanks and turned hard for home. But I'm  not that smart. I'm 19
 years old and this SOB shoots at me, and I'm not going to let him get away
 with it. We went round and round, and I'm really mad because he shot at
 me. Childish emotions, in retrospect. He couldn't shake me but I couldn't
 get on his tail to get any hits either. Before long, we're right down in
 the trees. I'm shooting, but I'm not hitting. I am, however, scaring the
 hell out of him. I'm at least as excited as he is. Then I tell myself to
 c-a-l-m d-o-w-n.
 
 We're roaring around within a few feet of the ground, and he pulls up to
 go over some trees, so I just pull the trigger and keep it down. The gun
 barrels burned out and one bullet - a tracer - came tumbling out and made
 a great huge arc. It came down and hit him on the left wing about where
 the aileron was.  He pulled up, off came the canopy, and he jumped out,
 but too low for the chute to open and the airplane crashed. I didn't shoot
 him down; I scared him to death with one bullet hole in his left wing. My
 first victory wasn't a kill - it was more of a suicide."
 
 The rest of Carr's 14 victories were much more conclusive. Being a red-hot
 fighter pilot, however, was absolutely no use to him as he lay shivering
 in the Czechoslovakian forest. He knew he would die if he didn't get some
 food and shelter soon.
 
 "I knew where the German field was because I'd flown over it, so I headed
 in that direction to surrender. I intended to walk in the main gate, but
 it was late afternoon and, for some reason I had second thoughts and
 decided to wait in the woods until morning.
 
 While I was lying there, I saw a crew working on an FW 190 right at the
 edge of the woods. When they were done, I assumed, just like you assume in
 America, that the thing was all finished. The cowling's on. The engine has
 been run. The fuel truck has been there. It's ready to go. Maybe a dumb
 assumption for a young fellow, but I assumed so."
 
 Carr got in the airplane and spent the night all hunkered down in the
 cockpit.  "Before dawn, it got light and I started studying the cockpit. I
 can't read German, so I couldn't decipher dials and I couldn't find the
 normal switches like there were in American airplanes. I kept looking and
 on the right side was a smooth panel. Under this was a compartment with
 something I would classify as circuit breakers. They didn't look like
 ours, but they weren't regular switches either.
 
 I began to think that the Germans were probably no different from the
 Americans - that they would turn off all the switches when finished with
 the airplane. I had no earthly idea what those circuit breakers or
 switches did but I reversed every one of them. If they were off, that
 would turn them on. When I did that the gauges showed there was
 electricity on the airplane.
 
 I'd seen this metal T-handle on the right side of the cockpit that had a
 word on it that looked enough like "starter" for me to think that's what
 it was. But when I pulled it - nothing happened. Nothing. But if pulling
 doesn't work, you push. And when I did, an inertia starter started winding
 up. I let it go for a while, then pulled on the handle and the engine
 started."
 
 The sun had yet to make it over the far trees and the air base was just
 waking up, getting ready to go to war. The FW 190 was one of many
 dispersed throughout the woods, and at that time of the morning, the sound
 of the engine must have been heard by many Germans not far away on the
 main base. But even if they heard it, there was no reason for alarm. The
 last thing they expected was one of their fighters taxiing out with a
 weary Mustang pilot at the controls. Carr, however, wanted to take no
 chances.
 
 "The taxiway came out of the woods and turned right towards where I knew
 the airfield was because I'd watched them land and take off while I was in
 the trees. On the left side of the taxiway there was a shallow ditch and a
 space where there had been two hangars. The slabs were there, but the
 hangars were gone, and the area around them had been cleaned of all
 debris.
 
 I didn't want to go to the airfield, so I plowed down through the ditch,
 and when the airplane started up the other side, I shoved the throttle
 forward and took off right between where the two hangars had been."
 
 At that point, Bruce Carr had no time to look around to see what effect
 the sight of a Focke-Wulf ERUPTING FROM THE TREES had on the Germans.
 Undoubtedly, they were confused, but not unduly concerned. After all, it
 was probably just one of their maverick pilots doing something against the
 rules. They didn't know it was one of our own maverick pilots doing
 something against the rules.
 
 Carr had problems more immediate than a bunch of confused Germans. He had
 just pulled off the perfect plane-jacking; but he knew nothing about the
 airplane, couldn't read the placards and had 200 miles of enemy territory
 to cross. At home there would be hundreds of his friends and fellow
 warriors, all of whom were, at that moment, preparing their guns to shoot
 at airplanes marked with swastikas and crosses - airplanes identical to
 the one Bruce Carr was at that moment flying. But Carr wasn't thinking
 that far ahead. First, he had to get there. And that meant learning how to
 fly the German fighter.
 
 "There were two buttons behind the throttle and three buttons behind those
 two. I wasn't sure what to push so I pushed one button and nothing
 happened. I pushed the other and the gear started up. As soon as I felt it
 coming up and I cleared the fence at the edge of the German field, then I
 took it down little lower and headed for home. All I wanted to do was
 clear the ground by about six inches. And there was only one throttle
 position for me . . . FULL FORWARD!!
 
 As I headed for home, I pushed one of the other three buttons, and the
 flaps came part way down. I pushed the button next to it, and they came up
 again. So I knew how to get the flaps down. But that was all I knew.
 
 I can't make heads or tails out of any of the instruments. None. And I
 can't even figure how to change the prop pitch. But I don't sweat that,
 because props are full forward when you shut down anyway, and it was
 running fine."
 
 This time it was German cows that were buzzed, although, as he streaked
 cross fields and through the trees only a few feet off the ground, that
 was not his intent. At something over 350 miles an hour below tree-top
 level, he was trying to be a difficult target. However, as he crossed the
 lines he wasn't difficult enough.
 
 "There was no doubt when I crossed the lines because every SOB and his
 brother who had a 50-caliber machine gun shot at me. It was all over the
 place, and I had no idea which way to go. I didn't do much dodging because
 I was just as likely to fly into bullets as around them."
 
 When he hopped over the last row of trees and found himself crossing his
 own airfield, he pulled up hard to set up for landing. His mind was on
 flying the airplane. "I pitched up, pulled the throttle back and punched
 the buttons I knew would put the gear and flaps down. I felt the flaps
 come down, but the gear wasn't doing anything. I came around and pitched
 up again, still punching the button. Nothing was happening and I was
 really frustrated."
 
 He had been so intent on figuring out his airplane problems he forgot he
 was putting on a very tempting show for the ground personnel. "As I
 started up the last time, I saw the air defense guys ripping the tarps off
 the quad .50s that ringed the field. I hadn't noticed the machine guns
 before, but I was sure noticing them right then.
 
 I roared around in as tight a pattern as I could fly and chopped the
 throttle. I slid to a halt on the runway and it was a nice belly job, if I
 say so myself."
 
 His antics over the runway had drawn quite a crowd, and the airplane had
 barely stopped sliding before there were MPs up on the wings trying to
 drag him out of the airplane by his arms. What they didn't realize was
 that he was still strapped in.
 
 I started throwing some good Anglo-Saxon swear words at them, and they let
 loose while I tried to get the seat belt undone, but my hands wouldn't
 work and I couldn't do it. Then they started pulling on me again because
 they still weren't convinced I was an American.
 
 I was yelling and hollering; then, suddenly, they let go. A face drops
 down into the cockpit in front of mine. It was my Group Commander, George
 R. Bickel. "Bickel said, 'Carr, where in the hell have you been and what
 have you been doing now?'"
 
 Bruce Carr was home and entered the record books as the only pilot known
 to leave on a mission flying a Mustang and return flying a Focke-Wulf.
 
 For several days after the ordeal, he had trouble eating and sleeping, but
 when things again fell into place, he took some of the other pilots out to
 show them the airplane and how it worked. One of them pointed out a small
 handle under the glare shield that he hadn't noticed before. When he
 pulled it, the landing gear unlocked and fell out. The handle was a
 separate, mechanical uplock. At least he had figured out the really
 important things.
 
 Carr finished the war with 14 aerial victories after flying 172 missions,
 which included three bailouts because of ground fire. He stayed in the
 service, eventually flying 51 missions in Korea in F-86s and 286 in
 Vietnam, flying F-100s. That's an amazing 509 combat missions and doesn't
 include many others during Viet Nam in other aircraft types.
 
 Bruce Carr continued to actively fly and routinely showed up at air shows
 in a P-51D painted up exactly like' Angel's Playmate'. The original
 'Angel's Playmate' was put on display in a museum in Paris, France right
 after the war.
 
 There is no such thing as an ex-fighter pilot. They never cease being what
 they once were, whether they are in the cockpit or not. There is a profile
 in to which almost every one of the breed fits, and it is the charter
 within that profile that makes the pilot a fighter pilot - not the other
 way around.
 
 And make no mistake about it, Col. Bruce Carr was definitely a fighter
 pilot

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