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 . Irion eptemb r 20'h 2002 ground. But he didn't know whether Bert was unable to pull it out or whether he wa m target fixation. BEN: Maybe a combination. ROB: It may have been a combination of both, but he wanted so badly to get his licks in! They'd been shooting at him and he wanted to shoot back at them. BEN: How often would you escort bombers, as opposed to bomb targets? Or would it be on the same thing - you do an escort and then on the way home, or the way to ... ROB: Generally, it was on a return from an escort mission. You know, we had occasional ground strafing scheduled, but it was on rare occasions. We did have some occasions. We'd have targets that we definitely wanted to go get or targets we'd seen before- somebody had picked out and said, "Hey, if we go back in we can get a whole flock of airplanes." Every airplane you could shoot down on the ground isn't going to come up and shoot at you. And that was the theory but we had a lot of losses from ground strafing. But generally, you did an escort mission and then on your return when you were released from your escort duties you had a certain part that you had to carry out. Then we'd go down and look for what we called "targets of opportunity." Look for trains, look for trucks, planes, whatever you could find to shoot at on the ground. BEN: How old were you at the time? ROB: I was twenty-one while I was overseas. BEN: Twenty-one. State-of-the-art aircraft, you're shooting things up- is there a certain, I mean is it, is the word "fun"? I don't know. 86