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The Most Heroic Airmen of World War II

Khalid Elhassan August 10, 2022 38 min

5. A Pilot Who Scared an Enemy to Death

Ace Facts - A P-51 making a low level pass on a German airplane — A P-51 making a low level pass on a German airplane. Art Station

After he graduated from Spence Airfield, Bruce Carr spent two months on more advanced training. It included qualifying in early models of the North American P-51 Mustang fighter, and its ground attack and dive-bombing variant, the A-36 Apache. He was sent to England in early 1944, and assigned to the 380^th Fighter Squadron, 363^rd Fighter Group, Ninth Air Force. Until then, Carr had never flown about 10,000 feet. When he took his P-51 to 30,000 feet, he was so impressed by its handling that he named his airplane “Angel’s Playmate“.

Carr notched his squadron’s first victory on March 8^th, 1944, when he pursued a Messerschmitt Bf 109 near Berlin, and chased it to near-ground-level while he fired his guns. Only a single bullet hit the enemy fighter, but its pilot panicked. Unable to escape in his 109 from Carr’s P-51, the Luftwaffe airman tried to escape by abandoning his plane and parachuting to the ground. Unfortunately for the German, he jumped too close to the ground for his parachute to fully open.

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.