5. This Pilot’s Heroic Flying Was Seen by His Superiors as “Overaggressive”
Bruce Carr’s superior airmanship that scared an enemy into abandoning his plane and unintentionally killing himself was heroic. Unfortunately, Carr’s superiors refused to give him credit for the downed Bf 109 on the specious reasoning that it had crashed, and not been shot down. He argued that it was his daring pursuit and aggressive flying that had caused the crash. As Carr saw it, he had literally scared the enemy pilot to death, and caused him to kill himself. It did him no good.
Carr was not only denied credit for his first kill, his aggressive airmanship was seen as “overaggressive” by his superiors. So he was transferred to 353rd Squadron, 354th Fighter Group. It was his old squadron’s and fighter group’s loss. Carr fit in better with his new outfit, and became one of the 354th Fighter Group’s top aces. His deadly streak started on June 14th, 1944, when he was credited with a probable kill of a Bf 109 over Normandy, France. Three days later, on the 17th, he shared a kill when he helped another pilot down a Focke-Wulf Fw 190.