“Red Flight, strafe ground planes,” ordered the voice of the Squadron Leader.
That was why they had been pulled down. The Hendee Hawks with their sixteen-wing guns would deal terrible destruction to ships on the ground.
“Sure, an’ ’tis about time,” O’Malley roared.
Down went the three Hawks, straight at the muck of flame below. The wind whistled above the din of bursting shells. Stan took a deep breath. It was great, if you didn’t meet one of those shells on its way up.
The AA shells were bursting close under their noses. It seemed certain death to dive any farther, but they kept on diving. The sea of flames leaped up to smack them in the face. It roared around them, then vanished lighting the sky above them. Stan saw rows of planes on the ground. He saw them clearly. A hangar was blazing and a row of oil tanks was sending up a pillar of smoke and flame thousands of feet into the air.
As Stan looked toward the flaming tanks he saw a circle of them lift and vanish into the air as a big bomb landed in their midst. Pulling the nose of his ship up he reached for the gun button, and swooped upon the lines of planes. On his left Allison and O’Malley were already raking those bombers. Stan’s Brownings drilled a swath of lead across the field as he swept over.
Up went the Hawks and over and back again. They saw the destruction their first dive had wrought and set about adding to it. The Liberators had circled and were down again, the roar of their dive shaking the earth and the air above it. The field where the rows of Junkers bombers had stood was heaving and rolling and exploding.
“Up, Red Flight,” came a command from Allison. “There’s a real show going on up there.”
Up they went, nosing through the flaming muck. This time they had little trouble in breaking through. Great holes and spaces in the barrage showed where the bombers had spotted gun placements. O’Malley was on Stan’s left now and Stan was flying the center slot. There had been no time to take regulation position. Stan saw O’Malley’s Hawk lift and shear away from a blasting burst of steel as a shell exploded under her. An instant later he knew the Hawk had picked up a package of death. It was twisting and wobbling, but going on up.
“Go in, O’Malley! Go in O’Malley,” Allison was droning. “Get back across. Get back across.”