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.