Dave Dawson in Libya

by Robert Sidney Bowen

As the last left Dave's lips, he ruddered slightly to the left and pressed his trigger release button. His four Vickers guns cowled into the wing spat flame and sound, and a German Henschel, in the act of banking off to twist back and charge downward, was caught square in the burst of bullets. The Nazi craft seemed to jerk sideways for a split second. Then almost instantly it continued around and down—and kept right on going down, leaving behind a long trail of oily black smoke.

"And then there were five!" Freddy sang out. "Well done, Dave. Uh-uh! No you don't, my little Italian bambino! I've been waiting for you. Oh, very much so!"

Freddy Farmer's rear guns barked out their message of war, and one of the Italian Bredas was smacked on the wing like a clay pigeon. It acted as though it had been hit by a couple of battleship salvos instead of machine gun bullets. Or perhaps it was because the Italian pilot at the controls went a little bit crazy in his frantic efforts to yank his plane out of Freddy's deadly fire. At any rate the 870 hp. Gnome-Rhone fitted Italian Breda went spinning nose over rudder post across the sky. The violent maneuver was too much for the ship. The monoplane wings sheared off as though some invisible giant had slashed them off with a knife. Instantly the wingless fuselage pointed its nose downward and dropped like a bomb.

Freddy didn't wait to see if the pilot and gunner were able to bail out. The two other Henschels had swerved in close by then and were spraying the Skua with a shower of hissing bullets as Dave slammed the plane through a full roll and then took advantage of the British ship's superior speed and power and zoomed straight up at the vertical. The zoom maneuver completely threw the Henschel pilots off guard, and as the Skua rocketed upward Freddy swung his guns around and raked one of the Henschels from prop to tail. The German craft seemed to stop dead in midair. Then the starboard strut between the right bottom and top wings buckled in the middle as though hit with a sharp axe. A second later the two wings folded together. The plane lurched drunkenly off to that side and then slowly rolled over and down into a spin. That's the last either of the boys saw of it. There was still one Nazi and two Italian planes in the air, and the loss of the three other ships seemed to add to the savage fury of the attack of their pilots and gunners.

They slashed up toward the zooming Skua with all guns blazing. Dave and Freddy heard the nickel-jacketed bullets rip and chew their way into their plane. Twice the Skua seemed to falter, but each time it kept on going upward. Finally Dave shook his head and kicked the plane over and down out of its zoom and sent it corkscrewing off to the left.

"Can't shake those guys!" he shouted back at Freddy. "They must have hopped up their engines, or something. Anyway, they've got more speed and power than I figured. We've got to fight it out with them, Freddy. There's no chance to shake them off."

"Okay by me!" the English youth shouted back. "Just beginning to enjoy myself, anyway. Tell you what, Dave! Go after that German beggar. If we put him out of business I fancy those Italian lads won't hang around very long."

"Just the idea I had in mind!" Dave said with a nod. "Mussolini's pilots are tough on pigeons and maybe crows, but that's about all. Okay, there's the little Nazi. I'll smack him and force him to turn off. Then you give him the works as we go by. You know, the old team work!"

"Right you are!" Freddy cried, and crouched over his guns. "The old team work it'll be!"

Stepping hard on rudder, Dave sticked the Skua up on wing and hauled it around in a vertical bank to the right. The terrific speed of the turn caused his eyeballs to start to roll up backwards in their sockets, and for a split second or so he almost went blind, or had a "black-out," as the R.A.F. expression terms it. He eased off the speed of the turn, however, and the pinkish haze that was starting to film his eyes faded away until he could see clearly again.