Stan put on a cold expression. Allison hadn’t fooled him. He had known the lank Britisher would come in. Allison had that look in his eye he always got when something was up.
“Thanks, Allison.”
“You should thank me. I’m giving up a flight lieutenant’s job.”
“You’ll still be leader and we’ll demand the Red Flight label. We’ll have three of the meanest brutes that ever rolled out on a line to make the other boys jealous.” Stan slapped Allison on the back. “Let’s go.”
They reported to the Wing Commander, then shifted their things to B-7. Later they went over to the hangar to have a look at the Hawk. Allison said very little, but O’Malley was as tickled as a kid with a new top. He went over everything and the only thing he crabbed about was the cramped quarters furnished for the copilot, who handled the bomb release and the extra guns.
They checked in at their new mess and Stan felt better. He looked in at the briefing room and found it presided over by a fat young man with a broad smile. In the mess he met no one he knew. Everything looked fine and he settled down to watch O’Malley devour a pie.
O’Malley finished his pie and looked hungerly across the room at the counter in the corner. He shook his head sadly.
“If I eat one more me lunch will be spoilt sure.”
Stan grinned as he glanced at his wrist watch. It lacked a half-hour until official eating time.
After lunch they made further arrangements for their new job. Allison was to fly with them in a Spitfire. O’Malley went along with Stan as a gunner and student, with care of the bomb racks in his hands. With everything set and ready to go, the revised and rehashed Red Flight prepared to take a little outing. Being on test work gave them plenty of freedom to choose their own jobs.
They slipped away without much notice being taken of the new ship. Everyone was busy with his own job and paid no attention to the big fighter sliding out on its tricycle landing gear with a Spitfire nosing right after it.
Stan settled back to have some fun with Allison. Out of the corner of his eyes he watched the vertical speed indicator and a wide grin spread over his face. The Hendee Hawk was going up at a terrific pace. Already the Spitfire was far behind. Stan knew Allison would fly the wings off the Spitfire to keep him from getting away. He laughed softly.
He kicked her over and into a tight bank and she zoomed around, boring away. He kicked her back and looped in a dizzy blur of speed. Allison shot in below him and Stan came around to knife past his pal. He glanced back and there was a happy, vacant grin on O’Malley’s homely face, as he absorbed the drone of the 2,000-horsepower, two- row, radial motor.
Allison dipped his wings as Stan went boring past him. It was really a salute and it meant a lot, coming from Allison with his dislike of radial motors.
They roared out over the channel at 15,000 feet. As the French coast line began to show through a thin mist, Stan laid over and started to climb again. Very soon they were nipping at their oxygen, flying at 26,000 feet. They saw no planes at all and the excursion seemed doomed to be no more than a spring frolic.
O’Malley growled into his intercommunication phone. “The Jerries must o’ heard we were comin’ out for a spin.”
“There’s a cloud or two down and to the east,” Stan answered. “We’ll drop down and pick up Allison, then go have a look.”
“That’s where the bushwhackin’ spalpeens will be lurking,” O’Malley agreed.
They knifed over on one wing, peeled off, and roared down. The gyro-horizon did a lot of strange maneuvers and the altimeter was unrolling like ticker tape off a Wall Street machine. They picked up Allison and Stan decided to give the Irishman a lesson. He set the air flaps, and before the startled O’Malley could save himself, he had lost a couple of inches of skin off both shins. The Hendee Hawk seemed to have decided to stop in mid-air. She was pointing her nose straight at the ground, but she had slowed to a steady 350 miles per hour.
“Mother o’ pearl!” O’Malley shouted. “What a nice day for dive bombing. Show me how you do it.”
“Just watch.” Stan pulled the Hawk out of her dive and then sent her in again with O’Malley watching him closely.
Then Allison’s voice cut in. “You fellows better cut out the grandstanding and have a look west.”
Stan looked and saw that Allison was streaking away toward a formation of nine Junkers Ju 87’s. The Stukas were bent upon business and were moving toward the English coast, undoubtedly bent upon intercepting a ship they had received a spotter’s report upon.
“Me bye, you may now show Mrs. O’Malley’s son a few things,” O’Malley bellowed. Stan sent the Hawk sizzling away after the Stukas. The Jerries had now sighted the two fighters, but they were keeping on their course, which meant that up in the big clouds above lurked a fighter patrol of Messerschmitts. The Junkers were slow and low-powered, not being able to exceed 170 miles per hour. Stan zoomed up and passed Allison who was also going up with the cloud ambush in mind.
Suddenly the Stukas broke formation and scattered, each diving for cover and cutting loose their sticks of bombs. Stan banked and selected a bomber as his victim. Through his windscreen he caught a glimpse of Allison and his hand stiffened on the control. A cloud of Jerry fighters had dropped out of the blue upon the Spitfire. Allison had gone wild as he always did. His Spitfire was a whirling, twisting demon, its eight wing guns flaming. But Allison hadn’t a chance against that swarm of Jerries.
Stan shot upward to get into the play. He cut loose the bombs from his racks and gave the Hawk all she had. He had a wide space of blue to cut through and as he bored in he saw Allison’s ship lay over in a wabbly, sickening lurch and then nose down.
“Guns out, motor stuttering. Have to go in,” Allison’s drawl came over the radio.
The Hendee Hawk roared into the whirling mass of Jerry fighters and its banks of guns roared. The Jerries slid away after they had tasted the terrible gun power of this new ship.
Stan nosed down and plummeted after Allison who had two Messerschmitts on his tail, but when the Hawk overtook them in one terrific spurt they swerved aside, each sending a final spray of lead over Allison’s ship. Stan picked the one on the right and laid over to cut across the Messer with all his Brownings drilling. A wing sheared away from the Messer and shot up and out of sight. The Messerschmitt went rolling down.
Stan dived after Allison. He didn’t like the way the Spitfire was wobbling and turning. He had once seen a ship come in that way and when the boys got to it the pilot was dead. All he could do was trail Allison who failed to answer his frantic calls.
The Spitfire kept going until she was almost to the field. As she slid out over the turf she wavered and her nose went down. She dived a few hundred feet, straightened, then slid off on one wing. Again she straightened and leveled out, close to the ground now. Suddenly she put her nose down and plunged to earth, landing with a smash that made her ground loop and pile up close to a hangar door.
Stan set the Hawk down and slid over to the wrecked Spitfire. He and O’Malley leaped out and ran to the ship. The ground men had dragged Allison out. He was slumped between two of them, his face bloodless, his lips tight with pain. The old, mocking flicker was in his eyes as he shoved aside the arms of the men and smiled at Stan.
“I take back everything I’ve said about Yank planes,” he said, then he slid gently into Stan’s arms, a limp rag of a man.
Stan gathered him up and carried him toward a field ambulance which was roaring toward them with its siren screaming, while O’Malley trudged along behind muttering savagely to himself.
A white-coated ambulance surgeon leaped out to meet them as the ambulance slithered to a stop. Stan laid his burden down gently and stepped back out of the way, dragging O’Malley with him. The surgeon knelt beside the unconscious man and made a swift examination, then turned and snapped to a couple of internes hovering behind him:
“Get a stretcher down here. This man is badly wounded.”
Stan surged forward and clutched his arm. “How badly?” he queried through bloodless lips. “Not...?”
The surgeon smiled and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “No,” he replied simply. “I promise you he won’t die. England needs all her fliers, and we’ll pull him through to go into the air again. I can’t tell how soon,” he ended briskly. “Not until I get him to the hospital and make a complete examination.” He turned away and leaped into the ambulance behind the stretcher, and it sped away with its unconscious burden.
“Glory be to God,” breathed O’Malley fervently. “Come along with you now, we’d best make our
