From the diary of Yourkshire Pudding
They upgraded our Hurricanes to new Spitfires, and these things handle like a dream. A flight of four of us was joined by two American P 400’s. A flight of JU-88’s escorted by a pair of Me 109’s and an Me 110 was on the horizon. Three of the Spits went to engage the 109, I cut across the front to go after that damn 110. The P 400’s went down the right side of the JU 88’s. The plane came in a little lower than me, I saw the markings on the side of the plane that I recognized, and the pilot is “Max Strudel.” I pulled a split ‘S; I got on the tail of the 110, and it banked to engage the other three spits. The distance was too great; I moved the throttle to the stops, diving down, closing and got a shot off, but the damage was light from the jinxing that “Max” was doing. He attempted to flip back on me, but spun out of control, and lost altitude. I flipped back to the bombers; the other two 109’s were above me, dancing
with “Doc” and “Captain Peckerhead.” “Adrian” banked the wrong way, and was trying to re-engage. I climbed into the blind spot of the Ju-88’s gunners, and started working my guns against the bomber above and in front of me. Looking at the flight, I saw that the P-400’s had worked over a few, their wreckage strewing black smoke as it plummeted earthward.
“Captain Peckerhead” broke off from the 109’s, and engaged the Ju-88’s. He had elevation on me, and got to the stream of bombers before me. He started working in on them; I could see bits and pieces flying off the planes. I pulled up my nose and opened up, chewing on a bomber that. I saw my bullets go into the bomber. “Peckerhead was to my left, and his second bomber just went down. I hammered again, and flames erupted from one of the engines of the 88. I had target fixation, and closed in too much, so I started snaking back and forth, slowing down to bring the bomber back into sight. That “Peckerhead” dove across, getting the shot off; the 88 rolled over and plunged earthward. “Peckerhead” called bingo ammo and headed for the coast. I goosed my bird to the next bomber in line, putting rounds into it. I saw in my Mirror that the 110 had climbed back up, and would get into range shortly. I hammered again, and
the bomber broke formation, banking off to the right. I kept the hammer down. The 88 reversed it’s turn, obviously looking for cover from the 110. I knew that I was low on ammo, and with that 110, I had not the ammo to take on either one. I banked away, watching to keep in the blind of the bombers, putting the throttle to the stops. I knew the 110 couldn’t catch me, so it was a quiet flight back to the field. I had only taken one burst of bullets, so damage to my bird was superficial. The Mechanic will be happy. Least this time I won’t have to read that damn ‘letter to the editor’ from that blasted frog Labeau over this mission.
Kill number five will have to wait till tomorrow……
