When she woke up the next morning it was just after dawn, the curtains on the windows converting the sunlight outside into a soft pink glow that gave her just enough light to see by. Kitty was still sleeping, so Gwen slid silently out of bed and tiptoed to the next bunk along where the American had piled her kit.

She hadn’t had a chance to wash the day before and she felt and was filthy; there was grease under her short nails and her hair was clammy from sweat, so she grabbed her wash bag and a towel and headed straight for the showers.

The bathroom turned out to be a rainforest fantasy of pipes made to look like creeping vines, shower heads that made it seem that she was showering in a downpour, and sinks that were wide leaves turned to catch the rainwater coming from the end of the “branches” above it.

Apparently the pilots hadn’t been called for a dawn patrol and were taking the opportunity to lie in (and probably nurse hangovers) so she had the bathroom all to herself, but that meant there was nobody to show her how everything worked and she wasted a fair amount of time just trying to find out how to turn on the showers - the tap was disguised as a leaf on the wall and had been camouflaged better than most army vehicles she had seen.

Once she got it going, the stream was strong and refreshing, and she was tempted to luxuriate in the first shower she’d had since joining the RAC, but the water wasn’t very hot and she was desperate to get back to work so she just washed as quickly as she could then cleaned her furry teeth before heading back to get dressed.

When she padded softly into the dormitory, Kitty rolled over and smiled at her. ‘G’mornin’!’

Gwen returned the smile. ‘Good morning! Thank you for making my bed last night.’

‘Don’t mention it; we stick together in this squadron. That includes giving a helping hand to someone who is too distracted to make sure she has a decent place to sleep before going to work!’

Gwen laughed at the gentle chiding. ‘Nonetheless. What do you yanks say? I owe you one?’

‘You do! And I might get you to pay me back with breakfast in bed one day...’ She laughed at Gwen’s dismay. ‘Not today, silly! When you have nothing better to do!’

‘Alright, then!’ Gwen chuckled in relief; she would have felt obligated to do as the girl asked. ‘Oh, I wanted to ask - do the squadron ever fly? I mean, you were all in the bar most of yesterday and as far as I can see everyone is still in bed. In my old squadron we had sorties most of the day and dawn patrols.’

‘Didn’t you see the forecast? There was solid cloud from five hundred feet up to pretty high yesterday, and the same is predicted for the next couple of days, so no flying.’

Gwen blushed. ‘I haven’t been keeping much of an eye on the weather since I was grounded.’

‘You were grounded? Why?’

‘It’s a long story. Do you mind if I tell you some other time?’

‘Of course not! Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get some more shuteye; one thing we learnt in France was to get as much rest as we could, wherever and whenever we could and this bed is far too comfortable to let go to waste.’

‘Be my guest! I’m just going to get dressed and go.’

‘Good.’ The blonde girl rolled back to face the wall and her voice was muffled as she buried her face in her pillow. ‘Oh, and try to pop into the mess sometime, tell us all how your work is going. We’re all dying to get to know you.’

‘Will do.’

Gwen smiled as she struggled to get her still-damp legs into her work coveralls, hoping that what Kitty said was true.

When she stepped out of the barracks she found not only the low lying cloud of the day before, but also a constant drizzle and a fog that hid the other blocks from view as she hurried along the path and the trees and bushes were indistinct and hazy around her, which somehow made her surroundings even more magical than they’d seemed the previous day.

The mess was empty apart from two yawning waiters, who had drawn the short straw and got stuck with being on duty so soon after dawn, and she hurriedly washed some toast and scrambled eggs down with tea before leaving again.

She had barely gotten to the workshop before the other fitters arrived as a group and immediately took up where they had left off the night before without her needing to say anything.

By midmorning the last of the panels had been taken off and the frame had been completed from parts of two Spitsteam tails that Jimmy had dug out of the salvage at the back of the main hangar. It was only a couple of hours work for it to be checked and polished and finally Wasp was ready for reassembly.

Satisfied, Gwen sent everybody to lunch and headed to the officer’s mess.

While she ate at the bar she revised her estimate of how long the job would take and quickly came to the conclusion that she had gained at least a couple of hours. She decided to celebrate by allowing herself fifteen minutes to have dessert and another half-pint of Bitter, but that plan was immediately put paid to when a powerful-looking woman with strong features and dark brown hair slid onto the stool next to her.

Gwen recognised her as one of the Misfits, the one that she had seen sitting with the Welsh pilot during lunch the day before. She couldn’t for the life of her remember the woman’s name, though, but she was saved from any embarrassment when the woman introduced herself with a wide smile.

‘Gwen, I’m Wendy, Wendy Llewellyn, Dreadnought’s pilot, Misfit Squadron’s armourer and Owen’s wife. In that order. But don’t tell him.’

Gwen laughed and took the woman’s offered hand. ‘Pleased to meet you!’

‘I’m glad I caught you before you went back to work; Sergeant Jenkins came looking for Wasp’s guns a few minutes ago and I told him that I wasn’t going to let him have them until I talked to you.’

Gwen frowned. ‘Why? Are they alright? Because, well, you know, I’m going to need them.’

It was Wendy’s turn to laugh. ‘No, they’re fine! I had to repair one and another was destroyed, but we have a few dozen of the same type lying around just in case. No, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about! I was wondering if you’d like to try something a little different...’

Gwen immediately scrapped her plans for a treat and followed Wendy into the woods behind the hangar.

According to the woman, when Whitehall had been drawing up plans to convert the holiday camp into a base for the Misfits, Abby had had them put another of the military buildings among the trees as a workshop for her. It had been deliberately put well out of the way, at least half a mile away, both for safety and because she liked to make a lot of noise.

She took Gwen in through a small door to one side of the main sliding doors and flicked a row of switches on the wall. Ranks of electric spotlights flickered on overhead, illuminating the windowless space within. It was huge, easily four times the size of the workshop that Gwen had Wasp in and it was completely filled with workbench after workbench, which were in turn covered with weapons of all descriptions.

Gwen wandered over to the nearest bench, which was on its own in the corner, and laughed when she saw the large, unpainted metal tubes on it. They were rockets, about six feet long and five or six inches in diameter, unreliable weapons that had been developed during the Great War then quickly discarded after they had killed as many friendlies as they had enemies and consequently not seen much use since. ‘Are you stockpiling for bonfire night or planning to send mice to the moon?’

Wendy laughed. ‘No! Actually, they’re something I’ve been playing with - I thought it would be quite fun to use them on bombers.’

‘Really? To do what? Dazzle the pilots?’

Wendy smiled slyly. ‘I developed them for ground attack initially and if my calculations are correct they should penetrate about fifty inches of reinforced concrete, so imagine what they’ll do to a bomber.’ She chuckled at Gwen’s shocked expression. ‘Eventually, when I’ve worked out all the kinks, I want to be able to put them on the turn fighters so they can be more effective against big aircraft.’

She beckoned for Gwen to follow her and led the way towards the back of the room.

As Gwen walked behind the woman she let her eyes roam across the other benches. One row was covered with small machine guns and pistols for infantry use, but of several types that she had never used or even seen before and a couple more held various heavy guns and artillery pieces of large calibre many of which were obviously meant to be mounted on ground vehicles. However, it was the longer, thinner guns on the last two rows of benches that Gwen’s eyes lingered on, the ones that were designed for aircraft, but she was disappointed when she saw that they were mostly standard .303 Whiting machine guns that Wendy was servicing or repairing, carrying out the normal upkeep of the squadron’s guns.

That disappointment completely disappeared when Wendy reached her destination, though, because the long benches that ran the length of the far wall held far more interesting items.

Eight .303 Whitings, ready to be taken away and fitted to Wasp were laying side by side with two other types of guns, both larger and heavier.

Wendy put her hand on one of the .303’s and turned to smile at Gwen. ‘These are yours. They are the armament that Wasp was originally designed to take and that are in all of A flight’s aircraft. Wasp has eight and there are also eight in Dragonfly and Ballerina. However, Bandicoot has six, plus two of those firing along her nose.’ She pointed at the next, slightly larger machine guns sitting next to the .303’s. ‘These are .5’s and these are what are in most of B flight’s aircraft. They have a slightly bigger punch, but you still need to concentrate fire to take down a bomber.’ She patted the .5 then moved to the next guns, which were much longer and looked far heavier. She grinned and stroked one of them fondly. ‘And these beauties are .79 inch Anglo-Helvetia cannon. They only fire seven hundred rounds per minute compared to the thousand five hundred that the machine guns can deliver, but the larger, more powerful shell will punch a hole through even a Hoffman’s armour.’

Gwen frowned. ‘I thought they didn’t work.’

Wendy shook her head without losing her smile. ‘Oh no, they work fine, just not for very long before they jam. At least, not until I got my hands on them, anyway!’

The woman winked, but the frown didn’t ease from Gwen’s face. ‘And you want to put them into Wasp? They’re far too heavy and they’ll never fit in the wings; they’re too thin.’

‘Call yourself an engineer?’ Wendy chuckled. ‘I’m sure you’ll figure something out if you think about it for a few minutes! And as for the extra weight, that’s very easy to solve. I reckon you have two choices - we can get rid of all the .303’s and put four of these in Wasp instead, or you can keep four of them and replace the other four with two of these. Both those options come out at about the same weight, give or take a few pounds.’

Gwen went over to the cannons and looked down at them. It would be wonderful to have them in Wasp and the aircraft would then have a sting to rival the nose-mounted cannon in the MU9’s, which RAC pilots feared so much.

‘Has the wing commander signed off on this?’

Wendy nodded enthusiastically. ‘Abby spoke to me about this last night - she only bloody came in and woke me and Owen up just after midnight...’ The woman chuckled again, she didn’t appear at all upset to have been woken up to talk about what was obviously her favourite thing in the world. ‘There’s already some of these in a couple of B flight’s aircraft, which was easy enough to do because they’re big enough, and I’ve put ten in Dreadnought for fun, but she wants them in all our machines eventually and reckons that if anyone’ll be able to work out how to squeeze them into teeny tiny A flight aircraft it’s you and your team.’

Gwen looked at the cannon sceptically. It really was so much bigger than the normal Whitings, but if the RAC had been able to put them in Spitsteams, then it shouldn’t be too hard to get them in Wasp.

‘Before you make up your mind whether you want to make the effort, though, I’ve prepared a little demonstration.’

‘I know what a cannon does...’

‘Humour me! Please?’

Gwen smiled. The woman was very enthusiastic about her work and she had to admit it would be good to let off some steam before getting back to work.

She nodded and the woman clapped her large hands together in glee. ‘Fantastic! This way, then!’

She started taking Gwen towards the door in the back of the building, but then something occurred to her and she stopped and grinned. ‘Hang on a second; might as well have some fun while we’re at it.’

She jogged back to the bench by the entrance and picked up one of the rockets, then came jogging back, casually carrying the heavy tube in one of her hands. She smiled at Gwen’s concerned look. ‘Don’t look so worried! They don’t blow up unless they’re fired. Well, not very often anyway.’

There was a red button by the door with a large sign over it that read “Going to have some fun? Press me or run!” and the woman stopped at it. She laughed at Gwen’s puzzled expression. ‘The MG’s have to respond to any gunfire on the base, just in case it’s an enemy attack. One time I forgot to sound the warning beforehand and all hell broke loose. Abby said that if I forgot to do it again she’d chase me round the airfield with a cattle prod.’

She pressed the button and a klaxon sounded above their heads. She did it three times, holding the last one for twice as long as the others, then winked at Gwen and went out the door.

A short way into the woods behind the workshop Wendy had a testing range which looked like a much longer version of the firing ranges that Gwen had spent so much time on during basic training, trying somewhat unsuccessfully to learn how to shoot the .22 popguns left over from the Great War. (It had been quite amusing to Gwen, but not as much to her instructors, that she had never quite been able to reliably hit paper circles from fifty yards with a rifle, but when it came to going up against moving targets, at more than five times the distance, in an aircraft, she had had no problems whatsoever.)

The range had been cleared of vegetation, although the tall oaks lining it almost completely overshadowed it, creating a kind of tunnel, ten or fifteen yards high. It was about twenty yards wide and ended roughly five hundred yards away at a target area which was sturdily constructed of three tall green-painted metal walls, thickly lined with sand bags, which would easily absorb machine gun fire and probably the shells of some of the larger artillery pieces that Wendy had in the workshop.

A large metal worktable was just under half-way down the range. It was covered by a metal roof to protect it from the elements and mounted on a low, steam-powered platform on fat wheels that could easily be moved over the dark grey steel floor with round lightening holes punched through it that had been laid the length of the range. Two guns, a .303 and one of the large cannons, were already set up and waiting for them there, clamped firmly in place on two iron stands that resembled anvils.

Wendy put the rocket on the worktable, then bent over the guns and did a quick check. In seconds she had finished and she grunted in satisfaction, then turned to Gwen, her big grin still in place.

She picked up two pairs of protective goggles from the bench and handed one to Gwen. ‘Here, have a better look at what we’re going to be shooting at.’

Gwen carefully turned the goggles over in her hands. They were similar to aviation goggles, small panes of glass mounted in a brass frame, completely enclosing the eyes, with magnification lenses on arms that could be slotted into place, but the lenses on these were far simpler and they had been made with glass that was much thicker and durable.

She put them on then started fiddling with the lenses. It took a few tries for her to find the right combination for maximum magnification, but then the brown, grey and green rectangles at the far end of the range sprang into sharp focus. Gwen blinked in surprise when she recognised the camouflage pattern. ‘Are those panels from Prussian bombers?’

‘Yep! Whitehall give me as many pieces of downed aircraft that I want in return for me sharing my little ideas with them. I’ve set up a couple of armour plates from HO111’s for today because they’re the thickest. Keep your eye on the panel on the left.’

Wendy bent over the .303 again. She had attached a long brass telescope to it and she sighted through it now, turning the brass wheels on the side of the stand to finely adjust her aim.

Finally satisfied, she turned her head to grin at Gwen, then pulled the trigger.

The sound of the gun was far louder than the klaxon had been and Gwen winced, but the burst was over almost before it had begun; the woman had only held the trigger for a second.

Gwen peered at the target. The rounds had hit in the centre of the leftmost panel and it was scored with a couple of dozen marks in a short vertical line, showing that the gun had recoiled slightly despite being tightly held on the heavy stand. The paint had been obliterated, showing the silvery metal underneath, but she couldn’t tell if the armour had been penetrated or not.

‘Let’s go take a closer look, shall we?’

As they strolled down the range towards the panels in companionable silence, Gwen stole glances at the woman. The smile hadn’t once left Wendy’s face since the moment she’d stepped into her workshop and Gwen wondered if she looked the same when she was caught up with an aircraft.

It didn’t take them long to get to the armoured panels and the big woman walked up to the one on the left and gave it a heavy slap with the palm of her hand. ‘There, you see? More than twenty decent hits, face on as well, and look! Only two rounds actually penetrated! If the panels had been at an angle and it had been more of a glancing blow, then I doubt even those would have gone through.’

Gwen bent to peer at the panel from up close. The woman was right; while it was dented and deeply scored there were only two small holes in it. Two rounds had punched through metal that had already been weakened by the other shots, but they probably wouldn’t have had much energy left to do anything once they were inside an aircraft, if they weren’t stopped by another bulkhead first.

‘That’s not unexpected, though, I mean, one of the first things they teach you about going up against bombers is to aim at soft spots like the control surfaces or the cockpit if you can.’

Wendy nodded, her smile still firmly in place. ‘True, true. But what if you didn’t have to?’ She jerked her head back to the guns. ‘Come on!’

They went back to the workbench and this time the big woman bent over the cannon.

When she straightened up this time she handed Gwen some ear protectors. ‘You’re going to need these.’

She waited until Gwen had the padded ear muffs in place, then gave her a thumbs up and bent to the trigger.

Even with the protectors the sound the cannon made was much louder than the machine gun and the effect on the panel at the end of the lane was similarly greater - the target was almost cut in half by a neat row of about a dozen holes that ran from near the base of the panel almost all the way to the top. It looked as if every single round had penetrated and, by the amount of sand pouring from the sandbags behind it, the rounds had had plenty of energy left over to do serious damage afterwards.

Gwen returned the woman’s grin. ‘Well, I’m convinced. I’ll take two, please!’

Wendy laughed and nodded enthusiastically. ‘I thought you might! These beauties can even put a hole straight through the armour around a bomber’s steam engines! But before I let you get back to work...’ She rubbed her hands together in glee as she walked over to the end of the bench and lifted the rocket, slitting it in place on a rack installed on the bench that looked something like the metal trays French baguettes went into the oven on. There were six spaces in the rack and Gwen wondered if the woman often shot off six rockets in a row just for fun.

Aiming the rocket was a simple matter of lining up the rack with the target and in seconds the woman looked up from the rack. ‘Ready?’

‘No.’

She laughed and bent back down, but then something seemed to occur to her and she straightened up again, her face serious for the first time. ‘That fire bucket by your feet has water in it, right? Because we’re going to need it...’

Gwen glanced down, but couldn’t find any buckets.

She looked back at Wendy to say so, but as soon as she lifted her head the woman grinned and set off the rocket.

The missile streaked down the range, making a high pitched whistling noise that was cut off abruptly as it exploded against the armoured panel that the .303 guns had failed to do much damage to. There was a deafening bang and a white flame that blinded Gwen as if she’d been looking into the sun searching for MU9’s.

‘Got the bugger!’ Wendy whooped and started sprinting down the range. ‘Come on!’

Mystified, Gwen started running after her.

‘Bring the bucket!’

Gwen was already starting to turn back when her mind caught up with her body and she realised that Wendy was poking fun at her, laughing madly as she ran. She chuckled and slowed to a jog, letting the woman pull ahead.

Almost without breaking stride, Wendy grabbed a fire extinguisher from a row of a dozen sitting ready just outside the target area and started to put out the small fires that had been started in the sand bags. There wasn’t any real danger of the fire spreading, especially because of the constant drizzle in the air, but she made sure to extinguish every last one and Gwen wondered idly what Abby had had to threaten the woman with for her to be so careful.

Gwen arrived just as Wendy was putting the extinguisher down and they stood together and stared at the panel, what was left of it anyway - it was barely more than a twisted frame around a gaping hole with a pile of melted metal on the floor underneath it.

‘What the hell was in that rocket? That wasn’t any explosive I’ve ever seen.’

‘I’ve got a friend in the Chemists’ Guild and she asked me to test a few things for her if I had the chance. She did tell me what was in the various compounds, but I’m not a chemist and didn’t really understand, and besides, I don’t really care what’s in it as long as it makes a nice big bang!’

Gwen laughed. ‘I don’t care much either! Just make sure I get some of these when they’re ready!’

In the end Gwen asked Wendy to bring two of the cannons, but all eight .303’s as well, just in case she couldn’t get them into the wings.

In her absence, Sergeant Jenkins had had the fitters running the control cables though their channels and fitting the first freshly shaped panels onto the fuselage, but as soon as Wendy and Gwen arrived with the guns on a small steam cart everybody dropped what they were doing and set to work on how to fit the cannons.

They obviously had to go as close to the fuselage as possible, not just because that was where the wing was thickest, but also, and more importantly, so that their weight was as close to the centre of gravity as possible. It was also easier to strengthen the frame around them there so that the increased vibration of the more powerful guns didn’t shake the aircraft apart.

The first problem that they came up against when they attached the cannon to the frame was that they were almost twice as long as the Whitings that they were replacing. However, most of that was the barrel and it was just a matter of having it poke out through the front of the wing, instead of being completely enclosed by it, like the Whitings had been. Gwen found she rather liked the look of the barrels sticking out; it added an aggressive look to the smooth lines of the aircraft.

The body of the gun wasn’t quite as easy to fit in, though, but Sergeant Jenkins almost immediately provided the solution. Apparently there had been a squadron of Spitsteams based nearby the squadron while they were in France. They had briefly been issued Spitsteams with the failed model of the cannons (before hurriedly being reissued with Whiting equipped models) and he had gone over to take a look at them with some of the other senior fitters one day.

Supranaval had neatly solved the problem of the larger gun bodies by creating large blisters in the wings to accommodate them. Wendy had changed the old drum-fed system to a belt-fed one, though, considerably lowering the guns profile and that, coupled with the fact that Wasp’s wings were slightly thicker than the ones on a Spitsteam, meant that the blisters could be quite small and would barely affect the aircraft’s aerodynamics.

Wendy stayed through the whole process, watching the engineers work with interest and keeping an eye on her “babies”. When Gwen gave the final word that she was going to keep the cannons she helped them install a trigger on the control stick with a selector to fire the different guns individually or all together. She also provided two small, but powerful, clockwork devices to automatically re-cock the cannons in the case of a jam, although she assured Gwen that, unless she tried to empty the guns in one go, she shouldn’t ever have a problem.

Four hours later, when new, freshly-shaped panels were finally in place and the guns were protected, Wendy slapped everybody on the back, told Gwen that she couldn’t wait to see how many aircraft she shot down, then left to join the rest of the squadron at the bar, her grin, impossibly, wider than before.

Gwen and the fitters worked until just after midnight, with only a short break to wolf down some sandwiches for dinner, and were back in the workshop just after dawn the next day, the last full day that they had, trying desperately to make up the hours that had been lost on the guns.

Jimmy spent most of his time with them, except when Gwen or the fitters sent him on an errand, but the wing commander hadn’t come back after that first night, perhaps because she didn’t want Gwen to feel like she was keeping an eye on her.

The weather steadily got worse during the day and graduated into a full storm just before lunch, with thunder pealing a couple of times a minute and lightning flashing through the clouds, alternately blinding and deafening them, but it finally broke shortly before midnight, just as they put the finishing touches to the new paintwork and declared the work done.

The next morning dawned clear and fresh, with not a cloud in the sky, almost as if it had been planned, but Gwen didn’t see it. Nor did she notice when somebody came to call Kitty for a dawn sortie, or wake up when the squadron took off. She eventually rolled out of bed, bleary-eyed, about an hour later and stumbled to the bathroom, where she stood under the shower for a long time, taking advantage both that the tanks that had been filled by the rain and that the mirrors on the roof were heating the water more than they had the last few days. She was still there when the squadron returned and barely heard the buzzing sound of their airscrews over the water as they landed, but it was enough to rouse her from her lethargy and spur her into action.

She dressed in her day uniform and headed for the mess.

The other pilots were in debriefing or taking care of their machines, so once again she was on her own except for the waiters. That didn’t last for very long, though, because the wing commander walked in just after she’d finished a soft-boiled egg and had started working on some toast with honey.

‘I thought I’d find you here! I’m glad you got some rest this morning because you’re going to need it. Finish your food, then get your flightsuit on and meet me outside the workshop in half an hour - I already know you’re a damn fine mechanic, now it’s time to see if you can cut it as a pilot as well.’

Thank you so much for reading. ‘The Battle Over Britain’ is Simon Brading's first novel in his ‘Misfit Squadron’ series. More information on where to obtain the book as well as other information about Simon and the series can be found on his website. Also, Simon would love to hear from you about this, or any of his work — please get in touch on Bluesky. We invite you to read Chapter Four by clicking the right-arrow down there on the right. If you missed out on Chapter Three you can go back and read in now by clicking the left-arrow below. Alternatively, you can go back to the beginning, the Prologue, with the beginning-arrow also over on the left.