 Three times while serving with No. 3 Squadron, Barr was himself shot down. The first occasion was on 11 January 1942 when, having destroyed a Bf 109 and a Fiat G.50, he was preparing to touch down in the desert to pick up a fellow pilot who had crash landed. He had his undercarriage halfway down when he was "jumped" by two other Bf 109s. He immediately engaged both and shot one down before more German fighters arrived and he was hit and forced to land behind enemy lines. As one of the German planes came in low to strafe the downed Kittyhawk, Barr ran straight at it in an attempt to throw the pilot off his aim, and was injured by fragments of rock sent airborne by impact from cannon shells. A tribe of friendly Senussi Arabs found him, dressed his wounds, and helped him return to Allied lines. For this exploit, and his earlier successes, Barr was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), the full citation being published in the London Gazette on 20 February 1942:
