Dave Dawson on Guadalcanal

by Robert Sidney Bowen

Dawson turned around, right enough. His head, and not the plane. He looked at Freddy, wide-eyed.

"Well, what do you know!" he cried. "And what a hope that guy has. You heard him, Freddy?"

The English youth nodded, and yanked his own headphones off.

"Jolly well right, I heard the beggar!" he cried angrily. "And here's our answer to him. Get set, Dave!"

As Freddy shouted the last he grabbed his rear guns and fired a defiant burst straight over the wings of the Zero. He could very easily have slammed that burst straight into the Zero, but that would have been Jap stuff, and he couldn't bring himself to sink that low, regardless of the seriousness of the situation.

"There's your answer, you dirty blighter!" he howled as the Jap pilot almost turned his plane inside out in a frantic effort to get away. "There's your answer, blast you!"

The English youth shouted more things, but Dawson didn't wait to listen and admire. He had twisted back front and was sticking the MK-11 through a vicious half-roll to throw off the aim of the two Zero pilots behind flying wingtip formation. And it was the perfect maneuver in such a case, too. He did throw the two pilots off and caused them to open fire a split second too late so that tracers from their guns cleared the top of the twisting MK-11 by several feet.

"Catch them Freddy, catch them, kid!" Dawson bellowed as he hauled the wing screaming MK-11 up out of its mad dive. "Nail one of the tramps, and make it that much less uneven, kid!"

Maybe the English youth heard, and maybe he didn't. Maybe he had that idea all along. At any rate, his guns hammered out their chattering note, and Dawson saw one of the Zeros seem to stagger and stumble in the air. By then he had brought the MK-11 around and up so that he could bring his own guns to bear. He stabbed the electric trigger button, and a great shout of joy burst from his lips as the staggering Zero suddenly became a ball of fire that hung motionless in midair for a split second and then fell down into the water, leaving behind a trail of oily black smoke.

Neither Dave, nor Freddy Farmer, however, took time out to watch the Zero flame downward to its finish. They still had a two to one fight on their hands, and against two planes that could fly rings around their MK-11. They had been lucky and had caught one of the Japs with his "flaps down," so to speak, but the other two were not going to be so easy. As a matter of fact, it seemed to Dawson that he had hardly slammed the death burst into that first Jap before one of the others was wheeling in at him broadside, despite the withering fire from Freddy Farmer's guns. The MK-11 shook and trembled as it was hit in a dozen different places. And suddenly Dawson felt as though he had been clipped in the chest by the tip of a spinning prop. Every bit of air was knocked out of his lungs, and black and red spots began to whirl and dance around before his eyes. Then, suddenly, the spots disappeared, and save for a dull ache in his chest he was all right again.