McGruff
Banned
I happened to come across this true WW2 adventure and it got me thinking how it would make for an excellent Wing Commander fan fiction story - or even a mission on Standoff or Saga. Especially if there was a way to mix up the keyboard/joystick controls to make them unfamiliar.
After carrying it [the chicken] 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 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, 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 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
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, 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 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."
"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.
After carrying it [the chicken] 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 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, 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 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
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, 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 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."
"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.