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Daring Escapes from Concentrations Camps, Enemies, and Crashed Planes

Khalid Elhassan November 11, 2021 36 min

Mikhail Devyataev had to escape not only German pursuit, but also survive his own side's antiaircraft fire. History Net

A P-51 makes a low-level pass on a German airplane. Art Station

8. This Pilot’s Superiors Alleged That he Was Too Aggressive

Bruce Carr notched his squadron’s first kill on March 8, 1944, when he pursued a Messerschmitt Bf 109 near Berlin, and chased it to near-ground-level with his guns blazing. Only a single bullet hit the enemy fighter, but its pilot panicked. Unable to escape in his Bf 109 from Carr’s P-51, the Luftwaffe airman figured that ought to abandon his plane and parachute to the ground. Unfortunately for the German, he jumped too close to the ground for his parachute to fully open.

Unfortunately for Carr, higher-ups declined to give him credit for the downed enemy fighter, on grounds that it had crashed, rather than been shot down. He argued that it was his close pursuit and aggressive flying that had caused the crash. As Carr saw it, he had literally scared the enemy pilot to death, and made him kill himself. Carr was not only denied credit for his first kill, his style of flying got him labeled as “overaggressive” by his superiors. His days in the 380^th Squadron, 363^rd Fighter Group, were numbered.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.