Shot down in his burning plane, a University of Cincinnati student was taken prisoner and then seized 25 of his own Nazi captors, friends here learned last night.

The hero of the hitherto undisclosed incident is Brandon Nuttall, sophomore in the Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, and Vice President of the UC Veterans Association. His home is in Shelbyville, Ky. While at UC he lives at the Veterans’ Dormitory, 2343 Auburn Ave.

I celebrate March 18 as “Nuttall Day,” he said last night. “For it was on that day in 1945 that I was shot down and lived to tell the story.”

He was captured by an SS officer. Several weeks later, when a prisoner in the basement of a building near Worms, Germany, he turned to a group of 24 Nazis and asked: “Don’t you want to quit?”

The war was going very badly for the Germans and the Nazis turned to the SS officer for an answer to my question,” Nuttall recalled. “The SS officer handed me a pistol and I led the party of 25 to American military police down the road.”

Despite a right arm fracture suffered when his plane was shot down, the liberated Kentuckian accompanied American ground troops in a forward sweep, then was sent back to a hospital at Thionville, south of Luxembourg, and then to a hospital in England. He returned to America May 1, 1945.

Nuttall attended UC in 1940-41. He enlisted in 1942 and served for three years, including nine months overseas, with the 362d Fighter Group of the 19^th Tactical Air Corps (TAC). He was a First Lieutenant and pilot, flying Thunderbolts and Mustangs.

He is a son of Mrs. Frances D. and the late Edwin B. Nuttall, 1319 Walnut St., Shelbyville. He graduated from Eminence, Ky. High School in 1940. Nuttall, now 23, plans to engage in research in plastics or synthetics upon graduation from UC.