Welcome

Welcome to my blog http://www.skegley.blogspot.com/ . CAVEAT LECTOR- Let the reader beware. This is a Christian Conservative blog. It is not meant to offend anyone. Please feel free to ignore this blog, but also feel free to browse and comment on my posts! You may also scroll down to respond to any post.

For Christian American readers of this blog:


I wish to incite all Christians to rise up and take back the United States of America with all of God's manifold blessings. We want the free allowance of the Bible and prayers allowed again in schools, halls of justice, and all governing bodies. We don't seek a theocracy until Jesus returns to earth because all men are weak and power corrupts the very best of them.
We want to be a kinder and gentler people without slavery or condescension to any.

The world seems to be in a time of discontent among the populace. Christians should not fear. God is Love, shown best through Jesus Christ. God is still in control. All Glory to our Creator and to our God!


A favorite quote from my good friend, Jack Plymale, which I appreciate:

"Wars are planned by old men,in council rooms apart. They plan for greater armament, they map the battle chart, but: where sightless eyes stare out, beyond life's vanished joys, I've noticed,somehow, all the dead and mamed are hardly more than boys(Grantland Rice per our mutual friend, Sarah Rapp)."

Thanks Jack!

I must admit that I do not check authenticity of my posts. If anyone can tell me of a non-biased arbitrator, I will attempt to do so more regularly. I know of no such arbitrator for the internet.











Thursday, March 17, 2011

P51 in WWII- Colonel Bruce Carr Thanks Ramey Hoskins!

I know you will enjoy this story. Because of him and men like him, we won WW 11.


This is a true story of 20-year old Bruce Carr, a Fighter Pilot shot

down behind enemy lines in WWII.

The dead chicken was starting to smell. After carrying it for

several days, 20-year-old Bruce Carr, still hadn't decided how to

cook it without the Germans catching him. But as hungry as he

was, he couldn't bring himself to eat it. In his mind no meat was

better than raw chicken 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 aren't they constantly dodging from

tree to tree . .. .ditch to culvert? 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, he struggled out of his

parachute and dragged it into the woods.

During the times he had been screaming along at treetop 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, all he could think about was flying fighters.

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, New York, 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 damned 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-40s wing, showed me where all the

levers were, made sure I knew how everything worked, then said;

'If you can get it started .. . go flying,' 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 1,100 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 it had a hint of fatalistic Darwinism.

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 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. I

mean REALLY impressed! It flew like an airplane. I just flew the 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 go 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 with ‘Angels Playmate’ 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. But 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 is. 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 his 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'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 through-out 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 then the airplane started up the other side."

“When the airplane started up . . .. 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.

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

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 a 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 across 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 as

he crossed the lines. But 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 crew.

"As I started up the last time, I saw our air defense guys ripping

the tarps off the quad .50s that ringed our 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.. 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 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, and 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 important

things.

Carr finished the war with 14-aerial victories on 172-missions,

including 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.

There is a profile into 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;

Colonel Bruce Carr, was definitely a fighter pilot.

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