# Ace Bruce Carr - Evading with a Chicken Around His Neck



## Matt308 (Apr 18, 2007)

Subject: Fighter Ace Bruce Carr . . Evading With A Dead Chicken Around His Neck 

Col Eugene Mechling USAF ret wrote: 

Bruce Carr was one of our instructors in F-80 Advanced at Williams Field in 
Chandler Arizona in 1951 when I was in flying school. This is the way 
training and combat was during the early stages of WWII. 

......................................... 

Subject: Fighter Ace Bruce Carr . . Evading With A Dead Chicken Around 
His Neck 

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 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 . 
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, 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 ed 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 
every- thing 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 -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, 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 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." 

--End Part I--


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## Matt308 (Apr 18, 2007)

--Part II--

"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 
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, Col. Bruce Carr was definitely a fighter pilot. 

by Budd Davison


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## Watanbe (May 5, 2007)

Great story, I can imagine the hardest part would be not getting shot down by the allies.


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## Heinz (May 5, 2007)

That has been one of the most enthralling stories I have ever read.


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (May 8, 2007)

Great story. And you know something funny? Last night on Zeno's Warbird Drive In, I was watching a short film about these "Pioneer" Mustang pilots, the 354th Fighter Group. And they included his story! 

But much less detailed than this one. Good read, thanks Matt.


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