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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