“There’s a goddamn U-boat down there!” Trust Silver to spot a submarine in the dark below the surface of the black water. “Right beneath us! Turn to port—turn one-twenty to port and fire at him, Jamie! He’s on the cruiser—he—”

I spiraled back in a screaming and dangerous dive, sending a volley of gunfire blindly into the black nothingness of the sea.

What I saw, what we all saw, was the explosion as the torpedo from the U-boat hit the Royal Navy ship and its engines blew up. There was a fireball of orange light in the silver and black, and we were so low that the shock rocked our wings.

“Can you still see it?” I cried, leveling the Blenheim, checking my wingtips for Ignacy and Harry. They were there, steady on me.

“Can’t see anything,” Silver gasped. “Bloody explosion blinded me.” He’d been staring right at it. “U-boat’s at two o’clock to the formation, a tenth of a mile out, moving to three, must be travelling at six or seven knots. He can’t have moved far—”

“Get on the radio and warn the destroyers, Tex,” I ordered. “Tell ’em the coordinates and get ’em to drop a depth charge.” Then, to my pilots and gunners: “Stay low in case he surfaces.”

There wasn’t a damn thing we could do unless he surfaced; we weren’t bombed up to sink him, and we couldn’t fire guns at him underwater.

But if he did surface, he could shoot at us, too.

The sky and sea had seemed so calm a moment ago. Now everything was on fire. Below us, a frantic rescue was going on. The sea was alight with oil and fuel and flame—the men on the sinking ship might burn before they drowned.

“They got a lifeboat away! Two of ’em!” Silver yelled. “Eleven o’clock to the cruiser. Pass the word, Tex, send someone to pick ’em up!”

I circled over the frantic sea and fired a flare to light the surface, looking for survivors.

“Think that U-boat’s gone?” I muttered.

“If he has any sense!” Silver answered.

We dogged the sinking ship until the rescuers gave up.

There wasn’t anything else any of us could do. They’d beaten us again.

“Cheer up, Scotty,” Silver said as we headed to Windyedge. “The lads behaved for you this time.”

Ellen:

I heard 648 Squadron roar in before daylight, and in a flash I was out of bed and leaning from the bathroom window. The planes were lining up over Kingsleap Light, lit specially for our lads, blazing green beneath the waning moon. The Blenheims raged past and I skriked out into the dark, “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

I went downstairs with my shawl over my night things to boil a kettle. I’d have to rush to the airfield as soon as I dressed. Mrs. Campbell was pottering about, pink-cheeked and excited.