FW190 stolen by Lt Bruce Carr

[Luc Vervoort]

Hi !

During October 1944 a FW190 was stolen by USAAF ace Lt Bruce Carr of 354 FG from a Luftwaffe airbase. He flew the plane to his home-base.

Who has more details about this FW190 ?

Many thanks and best regards

Luc

[Franek Grabowski]

The story is bogus. Carr flew and crashed a Fw 190 that was found post-war on one of the airfields and to be used as a squadron hack.

[Eric Larger]

Hello

Lt Bruce Carr stole of a Fw 190A (hybrid assembled with pieces of A-6 and A-8 models) . The action took place after war in any way . Did it flew it from Linz or Ansbach? , nothing is clearly established within the documents I have .

So arriving over Ansbach where his FG sqn was posted , Lt Carr was unable to get the landing gear down , he made a perfect belly landing on the grass airfield . This scene has been heavily photographed .

The Fw190 A was probably a former machine held by EKG(J) at Pilsen . This unit was disbanded at the end of March 1945 and the machines were split everywere in Germany , several found in Pilsen , one in Berlin, one in Ansbach ...

The code of the Fw 190A was red 31 + ~.

Hope that helps

Eric Larger

[RobertP19]

Originally Posted by Franek Grabowski

The story is bogus. Carr flew and crashed a Fw 190 that was found post-war on one of the airfields and to be used as a squadron hack.

The story is true and well documented. I personally knew Col.Carr and was fortunate enough to hear this story and many others from him before his passing.

[kaki3152]

The interesting thing about this story is that is was described in an USAF compilation of Air Force evasion stories during WWII. No one questioned the story in the 60s and 70s.
It always seemed a little strange to me, but possible given all the other stange stories of WWII.

[mars]

Originally Posted by kaki3152

The interesting thing about this story is that is was described in an USAF compilation of Air Force evasion stories during WWII. No one questioned the story in the 60s and 70s.
It always seemed a little strange to me, but possible given all the other stange stories of WWII.

A similiar story was 10 Russian POWs stole a He-111 from a German military base in a baltic island in 1945 and successfully escapted

[RT]

Wonder if the russians that "receipted" them treated the plane with more humanity than the escaping prisoneers

Remi

What is a mix of A-6+A-8 ??

[mars]

Originally Posted by RT

Wonder if the russians that "receipted" them treated the plane with more humanity than the escaping prisoneers

Remi

What is a mix of A-6+A-8 ??

Actually, not too bad, at first they were put into prison because the authority did not believe their story "What! you guys saw a He-111 parked in the airport, and simply aboard it and flew away? Your German master should give you a more creditable cover story!", however they were released later after their story was confirmed by captured German documents. The pilot, I forget his name, was award Hero of the Soviet Union some years later

[mars]

Actually how this happened was very simple, that Soviet pilot was a fighter pilot with several air combat victories in his credit, he was shot down and taken prisoner, in the chaos of the POW camp, he managed to took a dead fellow prisoner's identidy, so Germans did not know he could fly aircraft.
That day he was among one of ten labor details, and he found there was a He-111 parked in the airport without guard, they made a quick decision on the spot, took a turn, board the aircraft, and before Germans found anything was wrong, they took off and flew away.

[Peter D Evans]

We have a thread on the LEMB here which includes discussion on this incident and also features a two page article reproduced from the excellent Airfoil No.2, Spring 1984

Cheers
Peter D Evans
LEMB Administrator