For a while, the war seemed to be going well for the British and they seemed to have put the disaster in France behind them.

After fighter command had gotten over the initial shock of the couple of weeks during which Gwen had been grounded, they had changed tactics and no longer sent out small patrols to be picked off by superior numbers of enemy fighters. The casualties that had been so disastrously one-sided equalled out, then became favourable, and for a while it seemed that the Fleas were losing twice, if not three times as many aircraft as the RAC, especially when the success of the Misfits was taken into consideration.

The Fleas quickly adapted, though, and increased the sizes of their patrols in turn, sending massive formations of fighters and bombers that the RAC just didn’t have the resources to match. The British aviators still managed to shoot down slightly more Prussians than they lost, but they had far less to lose in the first place and soon began to feel the strain.

The Misfits were kept very busy during that time trying to fill in the gaps in the southeastern corner of Britain that many of the enemy raids came through, flying up to four or sometimes five sorties each day. They were by no means the only squadron making such a monumental effort, but they were the ones who were able to make the largest dent in the Fleas’ numbers.

Abby let Gwen take the lead more often and with her personal flight suit she was finally able to use the full extent of Wasp’s capabilities and put to good practice what she had learnt from watching the wing commander. She brought her total of “kills” to ten, making her a “double-ace”, and the squadron as a whole accounted for more than a hundred enemy aircraft without a loss, although every aircraft in both A and B flight had had to be grounded at least once for repairs and most twice (except for Mad Mac, who came through completely unscathed and seemed to lead a charmed life). None of the aircraft was ever off the flight line for more than a day, though, with the fitters often working miracles overnight to get their aircraft back in the air. The only exception was Kitty, who lost most of one of Hawk’s two tails to the crossfire between two Funkel FU88 bombers and only just managed to limp back to the airfield. Even so Hawk was only out of action for the rest of that day and the whole of the next, as Kitty and her fitters worked solidly, day and night, to repair the aircraft.

The Misfits’ efforts served to take some of the pressure off the regular squadrons, allowing them to recover and rebuild their numbers with new pilots and new planes that were hurriedly brought into service and over the next week or so it seemed that the balance was tipping once more in the favour of the British.

However, everybody seemed to know that it wouldn’t last; something had to change.

And then, one bright morning in August, it did.

With the gradual recovery of the RAC, some of the workload had been taken from the Misfits - they no longer had to fly dawn patrols, which meant they could have an extra hour or two of sleep and they were also not patrolling at set times. Instead, they were being kept on two-minute standby as a reactionary force for the entire day during two five-hour stretches. This was a whole different kind of exhausting, because they never knew when they were going to be called upon and were constantly on edge, kept waiting by their aircraft for hours on end with springs wound and fitters ready to push them out of the hangar at a moment’s notice.

The call came around ten that there was a large enemy raid massing over France and they were immediately sent up to join a Harridan squadron and two Spitsteam squadrons that were already working their way into position to counter it.

The Misfits climbed hard and were directed by Sapper towards Margate, where the other squadrons were rendezvousing and where the raid was predicted to make landing.

They were easily able to make it to angels twenty five by the time they got to their station over the coastal town, which was only thirty miles away from Badger Base, and were in position to intercept the enemy when the call came over the radio that the enemy had been spotted by the Observer Troop and had gone from being one hundred plus aircraft to two hundred plus, all heading straight for them.

That was the kind of numbers that even the Misfits found daunting, but Abby was as calm as ever. ‘All Badgers, this is Badger Leader. We’ve done this before and you know it doesn’t matter if it’s ten to one or twenty to one; they’re not going to be able to attack us more than two or three at a time anyway, otherwise they’ll be getting in each other’s way. Alright, A flight, we’ll go after the fighters as usual, but our priority today is keeping B flight safe so they can get a good crack at the bombers. B flight, keep your speed up and I want you to bug out at the first sign of fighters coming down at you; we might not be able to keep them as busy as we usually do. Any questions?’

In the face of the task ahead, there were none of the usual jokes or facetious comments, not even from Bruce, just a tense silence that lasted a good few seconds before Abby filled it.

‘Right then... All Badgers, check in.’

The enemy formation was still some miles off the coast over the sea when the RAC fighters engaged them and right from the start it was sheer chaos.

The wing commander surpassed herself, taking her usual method of not pursuing any single aircraft to an extreme, turning and rolling continuously, following a completely unpredictable path through the mixed enemy fighter group that comprised MU9’s, HH190’s and heavier MU10’s, squeezing off shots when they presented themselves.

It was incredible flying and, despite having gotten to know her various tricks, tactics and traits, Gwen was hard pressed to follow her. But, if she was having problems, the Fleas were having far more, and several times Gwen saw tracer from an enemy flash by, searching out Wasp or Dragonfly, only to miss the intended target, usually by a wide margin, and instead make contact with a fellow Prussian.

The fight was so frenetic that there was no chance to take note of whether any of the enemy fighters were destroyed by Abby’s guns (or by the errant friendly fire), but every so often Gwen would catch sight of a broken aircraft spiralling to the ground trailing dark smoke or pieces, although she never had the time to discern what side it had once belonged to, and as the minutes passed it seemed that the number of enemy fighters around were slowly dwindling.

Gwen was just beginning to think that Abby wanted to keep all of the Prussians for herself and wasn’t going to let her have a crack at them when the Fleas changed the game.

‘Badger Two, this is Badger Leader. There are a group of fighters, nine o’clock low, heading for the bombers. Cut them off, please.’

For a moment Gwen wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly; the Misfits fought in pairs for safety and effectiveness and for Abby to tell her to go off on her own went against everything that the wing commander had drummed into her from the moment she had arrived. Her doubt lasted less than a second, though, and she threw Wasp into a hard turn even as she acknowledged the order and dived away.

She immediately spotted the enemy fighters - four HH190’s preparing to pounce on B flight, who seemed blissfully unaware of the enemy lurking above them as they came around for another pass through the bomber formation. They had a head start on her, but she was gaining on them rapidly and a few quick calculations told her that she should arrive in plenty of time to cut them off.

She was still a good fifteen or so seconds away from intercepting them, though and she took the time to wonder why she had been sent off - it could only mean one of two things, either Abby trusted her to go on her own, or the fight was going so badly they needed to split up and double their efforts, or both.

Whatever the reason, she was on her own and that meant that she had to look out for herself for the first time as a Misfit and as she dived she kept a close watch around her, especially in the mirror above her head, although she wasn’t particularly worried about anyone coming up behind her while she was diving; she was faster than everything in the air except for B flight’s machines. However, it paid to know what was around, especially because at some point she was going to have to pull out of the dive and slow down.

The “double-aitches” never saw her coming.

Once in range she throttled back, so as not to overshoot them, and set her sights on the first one. She gave it a full heartbeat of combined cannon and machine gun fire and saw large chunks flying off its tail, turning the aircraft into an unguided missile, before nudging her rudder and lining up on the next machine in line. She gave it the same treatment and saw more than half of its left wing come off. As it went into an uncontrollable spin she gave her rudder pedals another nudge to bring the third Flea, the leader of the flight, into her sights, but he had seen his wingman disintegrate and had panicked, pulling into a sharp turn.

She watched, emotionless, as the wings tore off his aircraft at the extreme stress.

The fourth and final HH190 was smarter, but equally doomed. He pulled slowly out of his dive, measuring it as best he could and then stood his aircraft on his wing in an attempt to turn towards the relative safety of the bomber formation and its massed guns.

His machine was far inferior to Abby’s, though, and she easily matched his manoeuvre, turning inside him and pressing her firing stud. The sleek enemy machine turned into the path of her fire and instantly crumpled in on itself as its already stressed frame was tested further and found wanting.

She levelled out and looked down at the broken aircraft spinning away beneath her, searching for any sign that the pilots might have gotten out alive, but saw none; with the speeds they had been going and the violence of their machines’ demise they would most likely have died instantly. She was mildly interested to find that she was completely unaffected by the fact that due to her actions four enemy pilots had lost their lives; any feelings of remorse she might have had after that first kill were long gone and now the enemy aircraft were just that, aircraft that had to be destroyed before they could attack her friends and countrymen.

Gwen began a lazy turn, swinging towards the bombers and lining up for a run on them, but a loud thud and a hole opening in her wing put paid to that idea and had her flinging Wasp on her wing in desperate evasion, cursing her stupidity. She whipped her head around, searching for her attackers and found four MU9’s on her tail.

They had position advantage, but she still had superior speed and she used it, diving for the deck, spiralling wildly and praying that her wing wasn’t so damaged that what had happened to the third double-aitch wouldn’t happen to her.

Wasp held together without a single complaint and she saw the Muhlenbergs in her rearview mirror getting smaller and smaller, the long-range shots that they were taking in desperation falling well short. They pursued her for only twenty seconds more, then gave up when they could see that they weren’t going to come anywhere near to catching her and turned towards home.

Gwen levelled out at just over four thousand feet, having dropped over three miles from the fight with the Prussian fighter pack. She had gotten so far away from the battle that it wasn’t even in sight anymore, despite the numbers of aircraft involved. She could still hear it raging over her radio, though, as a couple of British squadrons joined in the desperate attempt to keep the bombers from reaching their target. It would have been an easy matter to get directions from Sapper or Owen in Bloodhound back to it, but a quick check of her instruments showed her that she was down to just over one third tension on her spring, which wasn’t nearly enough to get her up to twenty thousand feet again and still be able to fight, so she decided that it would be best to go home.

She dipped her wing so that she could look down and get her bearings. There was a thin layer of cloud just below her, but through a few gaps she caught glimpses of the coast and the railway line that ran from London to Margate, which meant that Badger Base would be to the southwest of her.

She turned onto her new heading, then scanned the sky. Seeing nothing in her immediate vicinity she lifted her goggles and scrubbed her face with her hands, closing her strained eyes and taking a moment to rest them.

That had been too close. She had almost died and it was all her fault because she had forgotten the most important rule: never fly straight and level whenever there were enemy in the vicinity, not for any length of time - she had been so caught up in her success and so focussed on the bombers that she had stopped looking for danger and had barely been manoeuvring.

Still, one good thing would come from it - she had lived through the experience and would never make the same mistake again.

She took a deep breath, gave her face a last rub, then opened her eyes and froze.

There were four aircraft about a thousand feet directly above her, two more right behind her looming large in her rearview mirror and two finger-four formations about five hundred feet off each wing. However, it was the two aircraft that were tucked inside her wings, so close that she couldn’t turn, that caught her attention and particularly the one to her right.

It was a triplane and it, like all of the aircraft surrounding her, was painted bright red.

The pilot of the aircraft was frowning as he looked at Wasp and she could see his eyes darting back and forth, taking in her modifications and its new paint job. He obviously recognised the aircraft, but was puzzled by the changes to it.

She took the opportunity to have a good look at his machine as well; curious even in the face of her terror. The three wings were elegantly swept back from just in front of the bubble canopy and mounted one below the fuselage with the spring incorporated into it, one midway up the fuselage and the third level with the pilot’s head. While the bottom two wings formed unbroken lines, there was a kind of indentation in the top wing where it bent downwards a few feet from the fuselage, attaching to it in a V shape which prevented the pilot’s vision from being obstructed. The wings looked too thin to take machine guns, but blisters on them, the same solution Jenkins had proposed for Wasp, showed the positioning of twelve machine guns grouped in six pairs close to the fuselage. Overall, the triplane had a curiously outmoded design, but from the stories she’d heard of its encounters with the Misfits, and in particular Abby, she knew that its performance matched and perhaps even surpassed that of Wasp and Dragonfly.

The red paint, solid on all of the other aircraft, was broken by four thick black stripes that diagonally crossed its fuselage and there were too many roundels to count painted under the cockpit, more even than Abby had - a couple of dozen British lions were joined by nine or ten purple and yellow Iberian Republic circles and a similar number of blue and white French squares. If the unique and instantly recognisable aircraft hadn’t been so feared already, the sight of that tally would have dismayed the bravest of British pilots, yet Gwen found herself absolutely indifferent.

The enemy pilot finished his inspection of her aircraft and finally met her eyes. His frown deepened slightly when he inevitably didn’t recognise her, but then he smiled as he seemed to put two and two together.

It was that smile that told her who he was; she had seen it so many times, but far larger and on a screen - he was Hans Gruber, Hollywoodland star, pilot of Flamme, the most advanced aircraft in Die Fliegertruppe.

Commander of the Crimson Barons.

The Barons were hand-picked by Gruber and their aircraft, rather flamboyantly named Blutsaugers by the Prussians (loosely translated by the British, usually with a sneer, as Bloodsuckers), were the finest the Prussians could fabricate. Gwen knew that individually they weren’t as good as the Misfits and their machines and she was certain that she could have survived against one, if not two or three of them, but she was surrounded by all sixteen of the troupe and was already under their guns - any move that she made would be instantly answered with dozens of streams of metal.

She was dead and there was nothing she could do about it

The realisation was terrifying, but she found a strange calm as she resigned herself to it.

Gruber lifted his hand in salute, a gesture which Gwen returned with a smile, then both of the flanking aircraft fell back out of her vision.

Gwen sighed and reached forward to stroke the photo of her husband. ‘See you soon, darling.’

She took a deep breath and stared fixedly at Richard’s smiling face, steeling herself against the coming storm, wondering if she would hear the bullets coming, wondering if it would hurt, or whether her body would be ripped apart so quickly that she wouldn’t feel it.

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 Ten by clicking the right-arrow down there on the right. If you missed out on Chapter Eight 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.