STL717
CL-215 Lake James, NC
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2003
- Posts
- 251
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, he struggled out of his
parachute and 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 Messerchmitts, Focke-Wulfs, trains and
trucks he had in his sights. He never expected to find himself a
pedestrian far behind enemy lines. The instant antiaircraft
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, 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 everything. 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 r! eady to move on to the next step.Including
his 40 hours in the P-40 terrorizing Georgia, Carr had less
than160 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 roa! red 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 calm down.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. So, I 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 in 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' 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 maverick pilots doing something against the rules.
hadn't realized that Czechoslovakian forests had no underbrush
until, at the edge of the farm field, he struggled out of his
parachute and 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 Messerchmitts, Focke-Wulfs, trains and
trucks he had in his sights. He never expected to find himself a
pedestrian far behind enemy lines. The instant antiaircraft
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, 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 everything. 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 r! eady to move on to the next step.Including
his 40 hours in the P-40 terrorizing Georgia, Carr had less
than160 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 roa! red 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 calm down.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. So, I 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 in 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' 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 maverick pilots doing something against the rules.
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