“Interfering with one of the King’s Flying Machines” was a serious offence, one punishable by a long stretch at His Majesty’s pleasure and Gwen spent the next two weeks in a cell in the detention barracks with her flying privileges revoked and only two hours of exercise a day outdoors in the hot July sun.

The base commander had visited her the day after her incarceration to give her the news - the wreckage of two Prussian fighters had been found near where she had reported the fight taking place, but three RAC fighters had also been found. Only one of the pilots in her flight, Aviator Sergeant Echols, had turned up alive - it had been his glidewing she had seen. The bodies of the other two, Squadron Leader Withers and Aerial Officer Perkins, had been found inside the wreckage of their aircraft, each riddled with bullets. They had died instantly in the initial attack.

With the news came guilt and she had gone through the moments preceding the attack over and over in her mind, wondering what would have happened if she’d ignored the order to close the formation and instead had kept her eyes on that high-above dot, using her lenses to resolve it into the fighters with their dull grey camouflage pattern. She might have saved them all if she’d done that, but instead of following the instincts of self-preservation which had been telling her that something wasn’t right, she had followed the ones that had been drummed into her in basic training and throughout flight school, the ones which had told her to instantly obey the orders of superior officers, no matter how much she disagreed with them.

She had replayed the following dogfight as well, remembering the way the first MU9 had disintegrated under her guns. Each time the aircraft blew apart in her mind she felt the same things she had felt in the moment; elation that was almost instantly replaced by horror, which she had been forced to put aside in order to fight for her life.

She still wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the fact that someone had died at her hands - part of her was horrified, of course, but at least part of her was glad that there was one less enemy to kill her people, her friends, her...

She had blocked out that train of thought before it had even started and tried to find something else to occupy her mind.

During those two weeks the war over Britain had started in earnest. The patrol that had caught Gwen’s flight had been only one of many incursions by the Prussian Empire that day and they had proved to be the start of a serious aerial assault on the British Isles. Since then things had gone very badly for the Royal Aviator Corps. Losses had been high and Gwen’s squadron wasn’t the only one that lost almost half its members in the first week alone. Some had even been reduced so far that they had been merged with others until new pilots could be trained.

Throughout it all she was stuck in her cell.

No matter how much she pleaded with the base commander and the new squadron commander they wouldn’t let her out, wouldn’t let her get in an aircraft and help, no matter how low their numbers fell - if there was one thing that the Kingdom of Britain’s military was known for, it was that discipline was paramount, and she had shown a flagrant disregard for that, which meant she was no longer trustworthy in their eyes.

The two weeks had passed slowly, torturously, but then, one day, around mid-morning, two military guards came for her. She was almost relieved, thinking that she was finally on her way to her court martial, and the way they roughly bundled her into the back of a guard wagon along with her kitbag only seemed to confirm that.

Neither of the MG’s answered any of her questions about where they were going and there were no windows in the wagon, so the only thing she could do was close her eyes and listen to the rain pounding on the metal shell of the wagon while she tried to come up with some way to defend herself in front of the tribunal, but try as she might, she couldn’t find an acceptable reason for what she had done. No matter her reasons, no matter her success, the truth was that she was guilty and there was no way of getting around it. Pointing out she had gotten two kills using her modifications would do nothing to help her, in fact it was more likely to hurt her case; the British like a braggart even less than they like someone who has broken discipline.

Eventually she came to the conclusion that the only thing she could do was hope that they were lenient and that their need for pilots was greater than their need to making an example of one lowly sergeant.

It was a forlorn hope, but it was all she had.

The ride took two extremely uncomfortable hours, the last five minutes of which were along an extremely bumpy road, which mystified Gwen; she had assumed that they were taking her to London to face a court martial in Whitehall, or at least to a Glasshouse closer to the city, but she doubted that there were roads around the capital as rough as the one they were travelling on.

The mystery deepened when the wagon stopped, the rear doors were flung open and she stepped out of the vehicle and onto what she assumed was an RAC base, but was the strangest one she’d ever seen.

For practical reasons most, if not all air bases, had their buildings grouped on one side of the landing field, except for perhaps the fire control station or the ammunition dump; it was incredibly inconvenient to have to cross an airstrip to get from one building to another, not only for the distance involved, but also because you never knew when you might have to play an impromptu game of British Bulldog with an aircraft. For some reason, though, this one had been laid out with two lines of buildings facing each other across the landing field. The buildings themselves were also quite strange, at least on the side of the airfield that she was on. They were of a design that was, to say the least, atypical of RAC bases - they had none of the hastily thrown together but sturdy aspect of the buildings on every other base she’d ever been on, nor had they been constructed cheaply and efficiently with brick and iron, but were made of stone and had a quantity of ornamentation and detailing that spoke of an investment of time that the RAC’s engineers never put in because it was completely unnecessary and they couldn’t afford it. In fact the buildings gave the base more the aspect of an upmarket holiday camp than a military installation, even though just about everything had been painted green, including the dozen or so deckchairs folded and stacked up in front of the nearest building.

The buildings on the other side of the airfield were much more like what she was used to, though, and if it hadn’t been for them she might well have doubted that she was on an RAC base at all. They were simple but elegant structures of corrugated metal over a wrought iron frame, with flat sides and gently sloping roofs that came to an obtuse triangle in the middle - the same type of building that could be found on most of the RAC stations that had been hurriedly founded and populated over the last three or four years since the rumours of war began. There were ten of them in a long line, identically constructed and identically green, but of several different sizes, from the single huge one on the end that seemed like it could have enclosed Buckingham Palace, to the half dozen small ones that were not much bigger than the one she had at home.

The airstrip itself was narrower than usual and the only thing that told her it was used as such was its faded and worn nature, although there was an agricultural truck driving along it with two men in the back dumping great forkfuls of cut grass onto it, obviously in an effort at concealment and it seemed that an immense effort was being made to keep the base hidden, especially from the air. Many of the buildings were not just painted green, but were also draped with netting to camouflage them and there were trees everywhere, not the low variety that were spotted around most bases almost as an afterthought, but tall ones that shaded them and overhung them and undoubtedly caused hazards for the aircraft.

While she was curious about the entire base, it was the largest of the buildings on the far side of the strip to which her attention inexorably returned. Its enormous doors were pulled half-way open and in the shadows of the hangar, made deeper by the bright sunlight outside, she could just about make out several aircraft of designs that she had never seen before - personal aircraft, as individual as their designers, which had no business being on a military base and she felt her feet automatically taking her towards the hangar for a closer look, but a stern voice brought her back before she could do anything that the MG’s might use as an excuse to punish her for.

‘Aviator Sergeant Stone!’

Gwen turned to find the wing commander who had been there on the day of her shame coming from the building that the wagon had stopped outside - a command post bristling with radar antennae. She wasn’t in full dress uniform this time, but rather a normal day uniform like Gwen. It was the exact same blue colour as the dress uniform, but infinitely more practical with trousers instead of voluminous skirts and no corset. The buttons on her short tunic top, forming an elegant V-shape, were gold instead of the brass on Gwen’s and her top hat was six inches high and purple-banded, as befitting an officer, instead of the three inches and blue band that Gwen as a non-commissioned officer warranted.

Gwen snapped to attention, her hand coming up to touch the brim of her hat, her palm towards the woman.

The wing commander returned the salute, then smiled warmly. ‘As you were, sergeant.’

Gwen relaxed, but only slightly; she was still worried about why she was there - for all she knew this was some kind of strange labour camp, although that was looking less likely by the second.

The woman came to stand in front of her and looked her up and down and Gwen did the same, albeit less overtly.

The woman was much younger than she had thought she was when she’d first seen her - perhaps in her early thirties. She seemed far too young to hold the rank that she did, but there was an air of experience and confidence about her that told Gwen that she had earned it. However, there was also a sorrow in her eyes that spoke of a life lived with too much loss and the lines on her forehead were deeper than they should have been for her age, speaking of intense and constant worry.

The wing commander nodded, apparently satisfied with what she saw and turned to the MG’s. ‘Thank you, I’ll take custody of the prisoner now.’

The MG’s came to attention and saluted smartly, then got back into the wagon and drove away, the steam-powered vehicle puffing merrily as it bounced across the airfield and turned into one of the larger buildings a bit further down.

‘My name is Abigail Lennox, but everyone calls me Abby. I’m in command of this base and the single squadron that operates from it.’

Hope bloomed in Gwen’s heart. ‘Does that mean...?’

The woman nodded. ‘Yes, you have been released into my custody pending my assessment of your usefulness. However this is only a temporary reprieve. If you prove useful and as good a pilot as you are a mechanic, then I will keep you. If not, then it is straight back to where you came from.’

‘How...?’

‘I have friends in high places and what I want, I get.’

The wing commander winked, then glanced over Gwen’s shoulder in the direction the young woman had been staring when she’d called her name and jerked her chin at the enormous building. ‘Let’s go take a look, shall we?’

Without waiting for an answer, she walked across the airstrip, seemingly uncaring that the wet grass clippings stuck to her highly polished shoes and Gwen had to hurry to catch up with her.

‘Where are we, ma’am?’

The wing commander glanced at Gwen out of the corner of her eye. ‘Why do you want to know? Are you a spy?’

‘A spy? No! Of course not! I’m not!’ She stuttered, protesting her innocence, but then went bright red when she saw the grin on the woman’s face.

‘Relax, Gwen, and please, call me Abby.’ The woman stopped in the middle of the field. ‘As you might have guessed this used to be a holiday camp for the well to do and their scions to mix in comfort during the summer months and do things like show off their jewels and find good matches for their children. It closed about five years ago when rumours of war started and the King started his austerity campaign and we got hold of it a year or so ago. The engineer boys put up the hangars and workshops for us, but most of what we inherited were sports and leisure facilities, which have been converted to our purposes - for example: you’re standing on what’s left of the cricket pitch.’ She grinned as she stamped on the grass. ‘I think you’ll agree we’re putting it to much better use.’

Gwen chuckled and nodded enthusiastically. ‘Definitely! I hate cricket!’

‘Me too! Just don’t let Bruce hear you say that.’ She returned Gwen’s laugh, then turned to face the row of elegant buildings behind them. She pointed at the building at the end furthest from them. ‘That was an ice rink, but we didn’t really need one of those so it was converted into offices for the admin staff. We barely have any of those, though, so it was mostly open space until some of the people on the base converted it to a roller-skating rink - there’s plenty of skates available, if that’s something that interests you. There was a Lido beyond it, but unfortunately it had to be drained and filled in; it was a bit too obvious from the air. We kept some of the deckchairs though, as you can see, but painted them; they were red and yellow and using them would have been a bit of a giveaway from the air.’

She pointed to the building next to what was the ice rink, which was of a similar construction and size. ‘That one contained the Fives courts, but it’s the medical centre now. We found a couple of dozen penny-farthings in a rack round the back of it, but I had to have them taken away when people started to race them around the woods when they were drunk.’

She waved vaguely at the other buildings in the row. ‘The building I was in when you arrived used to have a model railway in it, but that got half-inched by the engineers and it now holds the radio and command staff. The rest have been converted to dining halls for officers, NCO’s and enlisted men and women. There’s another dozen or so buildings behind them which were mostly dormitories and have been kept as such, but there was also a ballroom which has been turned into the briefing hall.’

Abby turned and continued walking towards the hangar. ‘And as for where we are, geographically - we’re in the middle of nowhere, literally, pretty much slap bang in the middle of the Kent Downs. Maidstone is ten miles almost due west of us and Canterbury is about fifteen miles as good as due east. There are a couple of villages nearby, but there are about ten people in each of them and barely even count as villages. And before you ask, the nearest pub is in Maidstone, but there’s no need to worry, the messes are fully stocked!’

‘Oh, good.’ Gwen refrained from telling the woman that it wasn’t just alcohol she looked for in the public houses she frequented; informing her new commander that she craved the company of people who had nothing to do with flying or the RAC might not be the best way of ingratiating herself to her. Although, if Abby were to be believed and Gwen’s flying abilities and mechanical talents were all that mattered to her, then she probably wouldn’t care.

‘We’re pretty self-sufficient here, actually. We get fresh provisions brought in every day, of course, but we have a water aquifer, several fields of vegetables and even a few dozen chicken runs in the woods somewhere. We’ve also got a huge steam-powered generator buried at the edge of the base, accessible by a hidden ramp, which provides power to the whole base off the main hydrogen supply. In an emergency we could hold out for a few months without resupply, although there would be a revolution long before that because the beer stocks probably wouldn’t last more than a couple of days.’

The woman grinned again, then lapsed into silence because by this time they were nearing the hangar, which had a large white “1” painted on it.

Gwen was now able to make out more details of the strange aircraft within and her steps faltered, her mouth opening in a mixture of surprise, wonder, fascination and not a little desire.

The wing commander halted just inside the doors, giving Gwen a few seconds to take in the sight.

Twelve aircraft of vastly different designs were scattered around the huge space, not quite filling it, but not failing by much. They were brightly painted in every imaginable colour and every possible pattern in stark contrast to the extreme drabness and camouflage of the rest of the base, and seemed almost to shine with a light of their own in the shade of the hangar. The only thing that they had in common was the roundel of the Royal Aviator Corps, a rampant red lion on a sky blue disk, although she could also see that underneath every single one of the cockpits were painted multiple iron crosses of the Fliegertruppe denoting the enemy aircraft they had shot down.

‘The squadron is divided into three flights of four aircraft. I lead A flight.’ Abby pointed to three small aircraft grouped to the right of them, two biplanes and a monoplane. They were stubby with fairly thick wings giving them plenty of lift. ‘We are the turn fighters, responsible for engaging enemy fighters.’ Next she turned to point at the four much larger fighters on the left side of the hangar. ‘B flight are our interceptors. They’re fast and pack a punch. They go after the enemy bombers.’ Lastly she indicated the four remaining aircraft in the centre of the hangar, taking up most of the room. ‘C flight is our support wing. The big one at the back with the eye-aching camo pattern is our combination bomber and gun platform, the silver one over there is our high-altitude spotter and spy, the small one next to it is our low-level scout, and the blue one is our radar and command platform.’

‘Radar? In an aircraft?’ Gwen raised an eyebrow sceptically.

The woman grinned. ‘As I said before - what I want, I get.’ She walked diagonally across the space to the right, heading for the far corner. They passed under the wing of the gigantic six-engined bomber, giving Gwen a good view of the various gun pods studding its fuselage.

Behind all of the machines was the twelfth aircraft. It had been pushed into the corner and was surrounded by piles and piles of spare parts and things that looked like they had been salvaged from scrapped aircraft. It was black with yellow flashes and as they got closer Gwen was able to make out that it was a wreck.

The wing commander gestured at it, the smile now completely gone from her face. ‘This one’s going to be yours. The pilot... well, let’s just say she didn’t make it and her aircraft has been sitting here for a couple of months now, ever since Dunkirk. It’s past time it was restored.’

Gwen looked the machine over and frowned; it wasn’t the type of aircraft that she would have chosen to build and it was also more damaged than she had first though - there were multiple gaping holes in the mainplane and fuselage, the canopy lying on the floor next to it had a couple of ominous holes in it, it was sitting on supports because the undercarriage was bent and broken, and much of the tailplane was missing. It was a miracle it had been able to land at all.

Lennox saw her sour expression and mirrored it. ‘Would you rather be back in your factory-standard Harridan or Spitsteam, outclassed by Muhlenbergs and Hock-Hunds and unable to do anything to your government-approved machine to swing the odds in your favour? Oh, that’s right, you did. And you shot down two. And they locked you up for it.’ A small smile crossed her lips. ‘I won’t.’

Gwen bit her lip as she looked at the aircraft. ‘It’s a wonderful machine...’

‘But?’

‘I hoped that you were going to let me build my own aircraft, not make me repair someone else’s. If you just give me a couple of weeks...’

Abby interrupted her sharply. ‘Maybe one day I’ll let you do that, but we don’t have two weeks, we need someone in a machine now. She’s a good craft, designed by a good woman and she’s far better than anything any other squadron has got. She’s a turn fighter as you can see by her lines and like all of our fighters she’s designed to take dual springs for long-range operations.’

‘Dual springs?’

‘Yes, the second spring is mounted underneath the other one, back to back, and can be jettisoned at any time. It almost doubles the range of our fighters.’ She gestured at a pile of round brass boxes, eight inches thick and six feet wide, on the far side of the hangar near the door. ‘Don’t worry, we have plenty of spare Ozzy’s if we need them.’

Gwen stared at the Ozymandias springs. There were at least forty of them in the tall pile, still with the factory sheen on them. She could hardly believe that the squadron had them lying around doing nothing when they were so sorely needed elsewhere and to hear that they just jettisoned them when they were used up seemed like sacrilege - she had spent two weeks fighting with a slipping spring, which had almost killed her on that last flight and she wondered how many other pilots had died after experiencing the same problem, or had a spring fail in the middle of battle. That many Ozzy’s could have saved quite a few lives.

She felt like screaming in rage, but she said nothing and the wing commander went on, oblivious to Gwen’s seething emotions.

‘I’m putting you on my wing so I can keep an eye on you, but I don’t expect you to just keep quiet and obey orders; we are losing right now and traditional warfare isn’t going to cut it, so if you have any suggestions, any ideas as to how we can turn things around, I want to hear them. Chain of command be damned, you come straight to me. Understood?’

Gwen nodded. ‘Understood. And thank you for this chance...’

Abby shook her head, interrupting her again. ‘Don’t thank me; I needed a pilot and you were the best one available - I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there aren’t many of us alive anymore. Look, I know who you are and I know your pedigree, but that doesn’t matter to me one bit. All I care about is what you did to your Harridan and how you handled yourself against those Fleas. Understood?’

Gwen nodded and the woman went on. ‘I’m taking a chance with you, Stone, hoping that you will bring something to this squadron, but rest assured, I will shoot you down myself if you do anything to endanger the rest of my pilots. I have a hell of a lot more experience than you and I expect you to obey my orders in the air, but while we’re on the ground discipline is more relaxed and you are to have an opinion. That’s an order.’

‘Yes, ma’am!’ Gwen smiled; it sounded like she had landed in the right place.

The wing commander gave her a curt nod of satisfaction. ‘Good. You have three days to get her operational.’

‘Three...?’

‘Yes. Three.’ The woman grinned. ‘I hope you don’t like to sleep!’

Gwen frowned and looked at the damaged machine. If she stuck to just doing repairs it would just about be possible to get it flying in three days, but she wouldn’t have time to make any modifications. Which might have been one of the wing commander’s motivations in giving her so little time.

‘Do you have somewhere to shape Duralumin panels or do I have to provide specifications for them to be done elsewhere?’

‘Hut four is a fully equipped metallurgy shop and the fitters shape all our panels in there. They even have raw materials to create anything special we want - Wendy, our armourer makes good use of that, I can tell you!’

‘Good.’ Gwen nodded somewhat absentmindedly, her thoughts already racing ahead as she stared at the aircraft; having the panels shaped on the base would make things a lot quicker and easier and she might actually be able to squeeze in a few of her changes in the time available after all.

Abby smiled at Gwen’s distraction, correctly reading it for what it was. ‘Well, have a quick look at your machine, but only a quick one, mind you, then report to the officer’s mess in fifteen minutes; it’s nearly lunch time and I want to introduce you to the rest of the pilots. It’s the building on the end.’

The woman turned to go, but paused and glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Oh, one last thing.’ She smiled. ‘Welcome to Misfit Squadron.’

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 Two by clicking the right-arrow down there on the right. On the other hand, if you missed out on the Prologue you can go back to it now by clicking the left-arrow below, on the left.