Four aeroplanes, about the same size, and three smaller ones above them. Ah, three fighters flying in formation, beautiful—my heart gave a leap as I tried to work out what they were.

“Whew, they’re low,” Ellen added. “They must be on a drill.”

“Blenheims?” asked Jane.

“Aye, those big ones,” said Ellen. “But the others—”

“Spitfires!” I crowed. The thrill of recognizing those neat tapered wings never wore off. I sang, “The Deeside planes are here…” and Jane reprised “The Spitfire Song” and we laughed.

“Are they training with them?” Ellen wondered aloud. “Or—”

She slowed the Tilly to a stop, right in the middle of the road, so we could watch.

The planes seemed to grow larger as they descended, and we watched as the first, one of the Blenheims, touched down at RAF Windyedge.

But the big second one, the odd one in the middle, flew so low over the landing Blenheim that we all gasped in horror.

For a moment we thought one plane would land on top of the other.

“God pity us, they’ll be killed!” Ellen cried.

Then the one on top began to climb into the sky again.

The first stayed on the ground. All the rest, two Blenheims and three Spitfire fighters, followed the odd plane back up into the sky.

They roared toward us, black, throbbing machines growing swiftly larger, like genies coming out of bottles or balloons inflating. It was just like the day we arrived, only with more planes.

And the one that had nearly collided with the first was German.

I recognized its silhouette as it passed overhead. I’d seen a plane like it once before, black against a steel-gray sea instead of a dove-gray sky. It was a Junkers 88.

“They’re chasing a Luftwaffe bomber,” I gasped. “648 Squadron’s chasing a Luftwaffe bomber!”

One of the antiaircraft batteries on the perimeter wall let out a drumroll of machine-gun fire as the Junkers passed it. But the guns stopped almost instantly—the Blenheims and Spitfires were too close to the Junkers to risk firing at it. Six planes rushed past in a deafening roar of engines and black shadow. In perfect unison, like a music hall act, Jane and Ellen and I craned our necks and whipped our heads around to watch the planes soar onward and upward. I got a flashing glimpse of a sinister black swastika painted on the tail of the German bomber, and something like white smoke flying from the tail and the cabin. Then the closed back of the Tilly hid everything.

Ellen reached behind her seat to grab a pair of field glasses, cranked down her window, and stuck half her body out, sitting on the window ledge and looking up.

“Is it our musical pilot come back again?” suggested Jane.