“You are to fly formation as planned. This will be strictly a team job. There will be no free-lance hunting. Understand?”
Everyone looked glum. O’Malley scowled. It was not his nature to like strict rules. He had learned what he knew in the days of the Battle of Britain and later in the South Pacific and then over Africa and Italy. O’Malley always had been a rip-roaring fighter who accepted battle against any odds. If trouble did not come his way, he went looking for it.
Stan wondered if that last warning was not aimed at O’Malley and himself. All of the other fliers were trained to this sort of fighting. Stan and O’Malley were the only old heads in the flight.
O’Malley and Stan marched out with the others and climbed into heavy flying suits. The Thunderbolts were high fliers and worked best at twenty-three thousand feet or more. That meant heavy equipment with oxygen and all of the other trappings, including heated undergarments.
The pilots waddled out to their planes and climbed up. Ground crews moved back. They had serviced and checked the fighters and now their Pratt and Whitney twin bank radial engines were turning over smoothly. Exhausts flared blue flames which sent wavering shadows across the wet cement of the apron. Flight Officer Mickle was running about like an old hen with a scattered brood of chicks.
Stan glanced down the wet and gleaming runway. An Aldis lamp winked down toward the shadow bar. Stan eased himself back against the shock pad. He glanced at his temperature gauge and across his instrument board. The throb of his Pratt and Whitney engine hinted at power, though it was rolling over smoothly and effortlessly. Stan remembered other nights many months past when he had sat in a Hurricane waiting for the flash of the lamp and the order from the tower to go up through the blind alley between the barrage balloon cables to wage unequal war against invading Germans. Things had changed a lot since then. Now he was a part of the Eighth Air Force of the United States Army and was fighting for his own country as well as Britain.
“Red Flight, check your temperatures.” That was the voice of Flight Leader Sim Jones.
The boys checked in one at a time.
“Up to fifteen thousand. Stay in close,” Sim ordered.
Suddenly a motor burst into full-throated roar. A dark form hurtled down the runway and lifted like a flash. Another ship darted away, and then another. Stan slammed his hatch cover shut and opened up his throttle. He jammed down hard on one brake and the Thunderbolt swept around. She poised an instant, then knifed down the slippery runway. Stan hoiked her tail with a blast of prop pressure and hopped her off. He went roaring out over a mobile floodlight and up into the dark sky for the rendezvous with Red Flight.