A bursting flak shell right under Dawson's left wing seemed to spew a shower of red and gold straight into his face. The Mustang lurched crazily off to the other side, and for one heart-chilling moment Dawson feared that the aircraft had been hit, and badly crippled. But such was not the case, fortunately. The bursting flak was farther away than it had looked, and it was simply concussion that sent the Mustang sliding off to one side. A touch of stick and rudder, and Dawson had it back into position in no time.
And then the radio silence was broken.
"Bandits ahead at six o'clock, fighter aircraft!" came the escort leader's voice over the air waves. "Same level but starting to dive on the big boys. Green and Blue Fighters go down and engage. Don't let the bums get through. Smack 'em. Other flights hold your altitude and course."
Dawson was flying in Red Flight of the formation, so he obeyed the latter order and held his altitude and course. Just the same it was not with a little envy that he watched Green and Blue Flights peel off and go wing-screaming downward. At first he couldn't pick out the Nazi planes against the eastern sky. But suddenly he did see them and his heart contracted slightly. There were at least a hundred of them, and even in the bad light he could tell that they were Focke-Wulf One Nineties, and the new Messerschmitt One-Nine F's.
"Just sitting up here waiting for us to come along," he grunted. Then, glancing down at the diving Mustangs, he said, "Give them the works, pals. Show them how we do it where we come from."
And as though the Mustang pilots had actually heard him, they pulled up out of their short dive and went thundering in at the Nazis with all guns blazing. And hardly had Dawson seen the silvery paths of tracer bullets cut across the sky before two Nazi Messerschmitts exploded in twin sheets of brilliant red flame that seemed to light up the entire sky for miles and miles around.
"How's that for apples, you mugs?" Dawson shouted spontaneously. "No like, huh? Well, there's more where that sample came from!"
"Down a thousand feet, all escort Flights!" the leader's voice barked in Dawson's earphones. "Number one point ahead. Get down a thousand feet, and stay there. Everybody keep their eyes peeled for bandits."
Dawson's heart skipped a beat, and he unconsciously turned his head and looked back at Freddy Farmer's dawn-blurred Mustang. Number one point ahead was the signal that the first break-up of the huge formation was about to take place. Some bomber formations would go south, and southeast, some would go north and northeast, and the bomber formation of which Dawson was a part of the escort would bang on dead ahead for the incendiary raid on Duisburg, and after that to its bomb target even farther east. And not only did the words, "Number one point ahead" mean the break-up of the gigantic formation, but they also meant that in twenty minutes by his watch Dawson, and Freddy too, would be directly over the Duisburg area.
"Twenty minutes more, and then it starts for keeps!" he breathed as he looked back at Freddy's plane. "Twenty minutes more, and then we show that we're good, or just a couple of bums. Boy, wouldn't I like to ask Freddy how he's feeling, and what he's thinking about just now. It's a cinch, though, he isn't feeling any more jittery than I'm feeling. And probably not half as much, knowing him as I do. Oh well, twenty minutes more."