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 anoth r one. The crew chief his crew chief, never forgave me for that. He to his dying day he still thought I did something to his airplane that I shouldn't have. And I run into him, you know, at conventions. He'd say, "There wasn't anything wrong with that airplane." BEN: Like you made it up. I had questions. Did you escort planes that were looking for help to get home? Did you ever go out of your way? ROB: Occasionally, Yeah occasionally we had to. And I can remember one occasion very vividly where somebody called in a straggler and said, "Hey, you better keep an eye on that guy. He's all by himself over there. They may go after him." And we're still, you know, over Germany. And it was over here at three o'clock and it was just like your eyes went over there and focused on him. And just right after this had been said and focus got over to this guy that had called in. That airplane just blew to smithereens. I don't know whether he had an internal explosion, some spark that set off- maybe he had a fuel leak, maybe that's why he was going back, or whether he had a burst of flak that hit him right there. But that airplane, as we're all looking at it- and I bet you every eye in the squadron was looking, focused at him- and it just went "Whooom!" And there was just nothing but a ball of fire right there. You saw a lot of them coming home and you'd try to- if you were not assigned to go down on a strafing mission, to do something, if you had nothing else to do- you'd have a flight try to follow them and keep off what they could. 108