Robert E. Irion, Sandy, Utah: an interview by Benjamin Bahlmann, September 20, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 537, 538, and 539

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Robert E. Irion eptem her 201h, 2002 He said, 'He got shot down on his second mission.' And he was with the 1 OOth Group which was at Thorpe Abbott's. They got a bad reputation in the war, which was undeserved, but they had a lot of casualties with one or two missions that gave them the name of "The Bloody 1 OOth" so they became a little ill-famous for that. It was a good group that just had some bad periods. Anyhow, so about three or four days later I got a chance to - we came back from an early mission- got a chance to fly over to Ed's group and do a little checking with the intelligence officer over there as to what had happened. And this guy took me in, gave me all the mission report and everything. This was the only plane their group had lost, the only plane lost in their whole taskforce, that day. One plane had got a direct hit from flak and that was the only plane in the whole formation they'd lost. And he gave me the time and the details and how it'd gone down and been spiraling down and they'd seen the flames and smoke going down, near Brandenburg and all this. So I wrote all these notes down and I thought I'd send a little note to his folks and give them a little bit of the story. Well, I got back to the base that night and I'm looking at this stuff and going over it and I'm thinking, "Boy, this whole story is really easy to visualize, it really sounds like something I saw!" And I went back and got my log book out and October the 6th, this date, we'd gone on a Berlin mission. That day, on that flight, I'd seen this one airplane very close up, just right outside the formation. I saw this plane- I didn't see it hit, but I saw it starting to go down and it's flaming and I'm watching: "Are there any 'chutes?" You know. And you've got to 68