...Managing to evade capture for several days, Carr was physically exhausted, starving, and suffering from continued exposure to the elements. Carr finally decided it was better to surrender to the Germans rather than be discovered.
Carr made his way to a nearby enemy airfield with the intention of turning himself in. When he arrived at the enemy field, Carr observed a ground crew in the process of fueling and arming an Fw190. Carr kept hidden and waited for the german ground crew to leave, then snuck through the perimeter fence, and climbed into the enemy aircraft cockpit. There he quietly spent the night familiarizing himself with the cockpit gauges and controls of the Fw190, which were unfortunatly all labeled in German.
After an entire night of informal self taught enemy aircraft ground school…and as dawn broke over the enemy airfield, Carr shattered the quiet morning air as he fired up the enemy fighter's engine, and hastely took to the skies westbound with absolutley no resistance from the still completely oblivious enemy forces.
After skimming the treetops for over 200 miles, Carr arrived at his home base with a non functioning radio and no way to communicate with his base to let them know he was a friendly. Carr elected a more direct approach. Rather than slowing down, dropping gear and flying the pattern, Carr remained screaming inbound at treetop level, chopping his power and belly landed his aircraft before the airfield defences had time to train their weapons on his aircraft.
Entire story at Sierra Hotel
And a well done to him!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting. I clicked through to the full story and was surprised to see that he trained at Spence Field in Moultrie, GA. The airfield is still there and is the home of Maule Air.
ReplyDeleteOpie Odd