| 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 P-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.’”
|
Out of the Sun
Drawing ctsy. Philip Alexander
|
“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 calm down.“
|
Mustang Group #2
Drawing ctsy. Philip Alexander
|
