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 eptember 20th, 2002 And Bert couldn't stay with my roll; he went down into the clouds too. But I knew he was okay because in just a couple of minutes I hear him on the radio calling somebody, asking what's a heading to take to get out of there. And they gave him a heading - so I knew he was alright. Well, I pulled back up through the clouds, get up on top again. There's nobody around. There's all these bumps of clouds here and there, there's no body in sight. And I shouldn't have been even going, looking for them anyhow, but you know, you think, you still think there's targets there. But they'd long gone. They were heading for the bombers. And so I headed for home. And I'd flown maybe five minutes after that when I heard: "Upper red leader." That's squadron lead, Boyd Jackson, saying: "Okay now, let's go down here on this field. It looks like there's some good targets there." And they'd picked out an airfield. What it was- and they didn't know it- but it was a pure flaktrap. They had the airplanes sitting out in the open so that they were so visible that they were sucker traps. And they went in on it, on the first pass. And just after I heard Boyd say, "Okay, let's go in, let's make a pass and see what we can do here." And about thirty seconds later I hear, "Upper blue flight, break right! Break right!" And blue flight had been the third flight- we'd been the second- blue was third and green was fourth. And blue flight had pulled up in behind Red flight after we had left, when I lost my oxygen, and he saw what happened to red flight as it goes across the field. The first 81