If it was right, he was short of gas for the trip. A hard gleam shone in his eyes. Regardless of the gauge, his tank should have been filled full. If it hadn’t been filled there was dirty work somewhere. He thought of Garret. Allison had said Garret had been put on the ground. Stan wondered what job Garret had been given.
Then he snorted. He was letting himself go. Just because he was sore at Garret he was imagining things. He rapped the dial sharply and the needle jumped, then settled back. If he went on he would run out of gas over German territory and have to go down. In spite of himself, he couldn’t help muttering:
“That would be a nice way of getting rid of me.”
He shrugged his shoulders. Allison was dipping his wings in a signal. They were going down to have a look below. He couldn’t use his flap mike. If he cut and ran he would have to prove he hadn’t drained his tank to get out of a hot odds-on battle; he’d have to have proof that the tank wasn’t filled when he took off. But he had to decide at once.
A guarded voice spoke. It was Allison’s. “Peel off and dive by position. Come up after a check below clouds.”
The Flight Lieutenant’s Spitfire lanced over on its side and streaked down like a rocket. O’Malley followed. Stan’s lips pulled into a hard line. He flipped the Spitfire over on its side and went roaring down the chute. The air speed and altimeter were going insane. The shriek of the dive shook every nerve in Stan’s body, and set him back against the crash pad, holding him there with a powerful grip. The three Spitfires roared out of the clouds at the same instant. They streaked into the clear blue for a moment, then shot upward and ducked back into the cloud again.
They had seen nothing except a low and rocky coastline with white lines of breakers beating against it. Not a plane in the world, except the squadron, so it seemed.
And then the clouds broke away and a harbor was in the frame of their windscreens. It looked like a toy harbor with its oblong breakwater. A great hangar with a black painted roof looked out upon the gently rolling waters. There were seaplanes in the picture somewhere. Stan craned his neck and saw what was holding the eyes of the men in the Blenheims and the Bristols. Three toy boats rode at anchor beside a dock. Those were supply ships that had slipped through the blockade. Headquarters was taking a last desperate chance of keeping that valuable cargo from getting through.
Then the Rose Raid actually started. The radio began to crackle. “Rose Raid at targets! Rose Raid over targets!” That was the squadron leader telling headquarters they were going down.
The nine light Spitfires went down in a screaming dive to cover the Blenheims and the Bristols. The big Bristols swung into line-astern formation and bashed through the first upheaval of Flak-88 shells. Black and white blooms of bursting shells bracketed them as their leader slid into the curtain of fire. The next instant the big Bristol disappeared in a mass of smoke and flame.
A Blenheim on Stan’s right twisted upward, threw away a wing and went down in a dizzy spin, ramming its nose into the roof of the black hangar.
The remaining four bombers plunged down upon their objective with the Spitfires doing dizzy stunts alongside them and the air seemingly filled with Heinkel single-seaters which had slashed into the picture from nowhere. A darting Heinkel dived upon Stan. Stan opened up and saw an aileron flutter away from the plummeting fighter. The formation of Spitfires had broken up now. It was everybody into the dogfight to keep the Heinkels from getting at the four precious bombers.
The slashing, whirling Spitfires did the job. They tore into the Heinkels and their deadly eight-gun combinations showed at once what superior fire power they had. Stan watched O’Malley send a fighter down and slide over on his back, out of the path of three more, to get another before his first burst of fire had ceased smoking. O’Malley was a demon of the sky. He was in and out and up and down and his trail was a trail of death. Allison was up there, too, doing just about as well but doing it with cold precision rather than by sheer recklessness.
Stan knifed into a wedge of Heinkels darting down to drop upon one of the Bristols. The Heinkels scattered before his fire, twisting and ducking and darting. Stan laid over and looked down. The bombers had unloaded. Below him the three ships, big now, and dirty in their streaked gray and black paint, were very close. Men were running wildly about on their decks or leaping into the water. One of them burst into flame amidship, another seemed to explode, the third listed far over and her stern sank slowly down.
Stan’s radio was shouting at him. “Rose Raid! Rose Raid! Ten bandits down. Two bombers have left formation. Two fighters have left formation. Rose Raid, come in. Rose Raid, come in!”
The Spitfires could not come in. While the bombers slipped away under full throttle, free of their loads and faster than they had been, the Spitfires slashed and blasted and ducked. Stan watched a Spitfire go into the bay, twisting and spinning. He wondered if it could be Allison or O’Malley.
“Red Flight, come in.” That was Allison’s voice.
“Comin’ soon as I get me another spalpeen,” O’Malley’s brogue burred.
Stan glanced at his gas gauge. It showed empty, but the Merlin was still hammering away. He nosed her up as he cuddled his flap mike.
“Wilson coming in.”
Up and up the Spitfire roared, shaking the Heinkels off her tail as she twisted and banked, her 1,000 horses tossing her toward the ceiling. Stan held his breath as he headed her home. Was that gas gauge a liar?
He heard the Merlin cough and knew the gauge had not lied. Looking back he saw the dim outline of the enemy shore. Back there he could cripple down and they would not shoot him. They would be glad to get a sound Spitfire and they would keep him locked up for the rest of the war. Ahead lay the gray waters of the English channel, rough and sullen, cold as ice.
“Wilson out of gas. Making a try for home,” he shouted into his flap mike.
Above him he saw that Messerschmitt One-Tens had joined the Heinkels in trying to finish off the Spitfires. He leveled off as the Merlin gave its last gasp of power and sent the ship gliding toward home.
For a time Stan thought the Jerries had missed him, they were so busy up above. Eight thousand feet below his wings the rough waters of the channel were moving up to meet him. The first warning Stan had that he was not to escape without a fight was a terrific jolting and ripping that almost shook him loose from his seat; the next was the staccato rattle of a rapid-fire cannon that was ripping great chunks out of his right wing.
The Spitfire writhed up on her side, then rolled over on her back and shot seaward. Stan pulled the stick back against his stomach and kicked the right rudder viciously. He looked up just as the Jerry loosed another broadside which missed the ship. The Jerry zoomed back up, satisfied he had finished the Spitfire that was trying to slip away.
Stan gave the Jerry but a glance. He was battling to pull the Spitfire out of the spin he had jammed her into. He soon realized that there was no control left in the ship, so he unbuckled his belt and rammed back what was left of the hatch cover. He squirmed out of the cockpit and dived. As he slid away from the ship he felt himself caught and held. His chute bellied out and the shoulder straps wrenched at him. A second later he was ripped loose and whirled away from the crumpled wreck. As he leveled off he saw that he was about 3,000 feet from the water.
It appeared also that Stan had the channel to himself. Overhead he could hear the faint drone of motors; otherwise there was no sound except the cries of a half-dozen excited gulls that swooped down about him curiously as the chute let him drift downward toward the gray sea.