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Bruce Carr, WWII fighter pilot story

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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.


 
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Cont.

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
anything 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 airplane. 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, 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. 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 the intent. At something over 350 miles
an hour below tree-top level, he was trying to be a difficult
target, but 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
was putting on a very tempting show for the ground crew. 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. With gear up, 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.
They didn't realize 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 would
not work, and I couldn't do it. Then they started pulling on me
again. They still were not convinced I was an American. I was
yelling and hollering; then, suddenly, they let go, and a face
drops down into the cockpit in front of mine. It was my Group
Commander, George R. Nickel. "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 g! ear unlo cked and fell out. The handle
was a separate, mechanical up lock. At least, he had figured out the
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. What makes a fitting ending to this story is that there is no
ending.



Colonel Bruce Carr grew up in Union Springs, N.Y. He flew for the 9th Air Force, 354th Group, 353rd Fighter Squadron and was credited with 15 air victories. His first victory over an Me109 on 3/8/44 brought him admonishment for, "being overly agressive in combat". He later became known as, "Pecks bad boy". Colonel Carr also served in Korea and Vietanm. He retired from the Air Force and passed away in Florida in April, 1998.

http://usfighter.tripod.com/carr.htm
 
Thanks for that, it was a great read. Any more like that? I'd love to read more.



P.S. Where is Lake James? I live in GSO and haven't ever hear of that. Is that the CL215 that's usually at the airshow at INT?
 
Lake James is near Morganton, NC.

The CL-215 is North Carolina's Forest Service water bomber N215NC based in HKY.
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/349574/M/

I was on Lake James in the early spring a few years ago and the CL-215 was doing recurrent training. They would touchdown, pick up a load of water and take-off again. On downwind the load was dropped and back around for another load. I happened to have a waterproof camera with me and got some photos.

The plane attends various air shows in North Carolina.

Did ya' ever see the movie "Always"? Like the opening scene but I didn't have to dive into the lake.
 
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Awesome

That is a great story, I am glad people are taking the time to write these stories down! If you have anymore I love reading these amazing stories.
 

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