Dave Dawson on Guadalcanal

by Robert Sidney Bowen

All right? He laughed harshly as that thought flashed through his brain. All right? Sure, except for the minor detail that the two Jap Zero pilots were maneuvering about to "box" the MK-11 in a deadly and fatal cross-fire. Yes, sure, he was all okay save for that minor little detail.

"Give it to them, Dave! Don't let the blighters get away with it! Fly their confounded wings off, blast them!"

The words had come from Freddy's lips, but as far as Dave Dawson was concerned they were just a waste of breath. He was well aware of the two Zeros closing in for a cross-fire attack. And he was well aware of the fact that he'd have to just about fly the wings off the Zeros in order to skip free of this air trap. As a matter of fact, the only thing he could possibly do was to play a long shot; to take a one in a million chance, and pray as he had never before prayed in his life. Take a long shot chance, and pray.

"Hold tight, Freddy!" he shouted. "I'm going to twist this baby plenty. I—"

He cut off the rest of what he was shouting because his chest was filled with sharp pains again, and his lungs felt as though they were breathing liquid fire. It suddenly seemed to take every ounce of his strength to move the control stick, and to kick on rudder. But somehow he managed it, and he sent the MK-11 curving upward and around toward the Zero on his left. And at the same time Freddy Farmer let fly with his guns at the Zero on the right. Dawson's Jap saw him coming and, rather than chance the full fury of the Yank's fire, he pulled off and upward. In that same split second Dawson steeled himself to the effort, slammed the stick over, booted opposite rudder and brought the MK-11 around and up in the opposite direction. In other words he cut off his expected attack on the first Zero to cut in up at the Zero on the other side. As a result of that double maneuver, which was carried through with split-second accuracy, he not only broke up the two Zero plane attack, but forced each Jap pilot to careen upward and away.

Too late the two Japs realized what was going to happen. Instead of both charging straight in on the MK-11, they both were streaking straight at one another! Both Japs saw that a midair crash was about to take place, and both frantically tried to swerve off into the clear. And perhaps they might have succeeded if it hadn't been for the deadly aim of Freddy Farmer. The English youth's guns snarled out their song, and one of the Jap pilots was stone dead before he could turn off into the clear. And his failure to do so spilled the beans for the other Jap. He couldn't check his plane in time, and he flew straight into the other faltering Zero.

To Dawson's ears, and to Freddy Farmer's, came the loud crashing sound as the two high speed planes met about three hundred feet above the MK-11. And then the whole sky seemed to be filled with seething flame. Dawson cried out in impulsive alarm and slammed the nose of his two-seater downward. Glancing back up over his shoulder, he saw the mass of exploding flame that enveloped the two Zeros. Then there was even a louder explosion, and the air was filled with falling slivers of flame. Choking and gasping from the effort it caused him, Dawson hauled the MK-11 out of its mad dive at about wave crest height and flew, level while red and black dots danced around before his eyes again, and dull, throbbing pain flowed through his chest.

"Nice, Dave!" he heard Freddy Farmer calling to him. "That was the most perfect maneuver I ever saw. Man! Did you fool those two beggars. It was absolutely wonderful."

"I'll just take half the credit, kid!" Dawson forced himself to call back. "But for that sweet shooting of yours the stunt might not have worked. And—Oh, for gosh sakes!"

Dave gasped out the last as he happened to glance at the instrument panel. One of the bursts of bullets from one of the Zeros had made a shambles of the instrument board. And the compass in particular was just a heap of junk. With the compass gone they would have to depend entirely upon celestial navigation. In other words, any hope they might have of continuing on to find Admiral Jackson's task force was completely gone. Because of the milling around in the fight they had, of course, lost all track of their exact position. And they would have to know their position exactly in order to set a true course for the area where they believed the Yank task force to be. And without the aid of the compass they wouldn't be able to hold to a true course, even if they could plot one. And so there was but one thing to do. They at least could tell the direction of south. And somewhere south of them was New Guinea with the Yank-held base at Port Morseby. So south it had to be, and in no other direction.