The next morning, nobody came to wake the Misfits at dawn. In fact it was past nine o’clock before the first of them wandered out of their rooms in search of answers and when they found Abby gone, the word spread and everyone got dressed to go to the mess.

The wing commander wasn’t there, but most of the pilots stayed to have breakfast. Owen, on the other hand, wanted to know what was going on and went to look for her. He found her in operations, having a heated argument on the telephone and backed out quickly to return to the safety of the mess.

Gwen and Kitty ate alone because Scarlet, who had finally made it to the barracks in the small hours of the morning, had decided to forgo breakfast and was still in bed. Gwen said nothing to Kitty about the kiss from the night before and the American woman didn’t mention it either. She was just her usual cheerful self and, unlike Gwen, didn’t seem to be feeling any ill-effects for the quantity of alcohol she had consumed. So Gwen put the incident and her confused feelings about it out of her mind and instead they spoke about their time with the Princess and had fun debating whether anything had happened between their roommate and Sir Douglas.

It was looking to be a pleasant morning, apart from the pounding in Gwen’s head, but then Abby stormed in fifteen minutes later with a face like thunder. ‘Briefing hall in half an hour; we’ve got work to do.’ She looked around the room, making sure that they had all heard her, then stormed back out again.

Conversation was much more subdued after that and when they left to go to the briefing many of the pilots requested a vial of Chalky’s alchemical hangover cure to take with them, a stock of which was kept behind the bar. It was a rough treatment which served to clear a head for a few hours but left the pilot feeling worse afterwards and was only supposed to be used in emergencies, for when there was no alternative before an important or dangerous mission, but they had a feeling they were going to need it.

‘Bomber escort? During the day? They’ll be sitting ducks! What bloody idiot came up with that bright idea?’

Abby sighed. ‘The bloody idiot who pays your wages, Mac - King George, the sixth of his name.’

Mac may have been mad, but that news gave even him pause. It didn’t keep him quiet for long though. ‘Hasn’t anyone told him that’s not the best way to use us? Or the bombers? He could even have asked us last night - I would have happily filled him in.’

‘While I would have paid money to see that, I’m sure people have told him anyway, but I happen to agree with him on this occasion.’

A hush fell over the briefing room as the pilots stared at her, not quite believing what they were hearing.

Abby met their eyes one by one, looking around the group that was gathered in a loose semicircle around her. ‘As too many people have said recently, desperate times require desperate measures and thanks to Scarlet we know exactly how desperate the situation is. The most important job on the table right now is not preventing their bombers doing damage to our cities and factories, it is preventing their army coming and taking everything away from us and Whitehall have been planning this strike on the invasion fleet since Scarlet’s recce. So, yes, I believe that the best way to use us, for this mission and this mission only, is as bomber escort. And as for doing this during the day - Whitehall want to make sure we destroy the most important targets in a single huge raid and to do that best we need to see them. They’re also gambling that the Fleas are still going to be reeling from our mission and won’t be able to mount an effective defence. It’s a risk, but one that they are willing to take, because possible gains are huge.’

Abby ignored the grumbling disagreement from the pilots and turned to the large scale map of the French coast pinned to one of the boards behind her. ‘Bomber command are putting as many aircraft in the air as they can and are sending a bomber group to each of the five ports where we can see the largest concentration of enemy forces. They have to be very careful what they bomb because of the civilians in the cities, though, so they’ll be mostly targeting the shipping in the harbours and the stockpiles and warehouses closest to the water. We will be covering the groups that are heading for Ostend and Dunkirk. We of course will be dissuading the Fleas from intercepting. If the enemy break off you are not to pursue, you are to remain with our boys and girls and see them safe. In the very unlikely event that enemy aircraft do not appear, once our bombers have turned for home we are to strafe any targets of opportunity we find, ammunition and spring tension permitting. Understood?’

Once again she looked at the members of A and B flights one by one, receiving nods from all of them, some more reluctantly than others. She gave them a grim nod in return then continued. ‘C flight. Hummingbird is not needed for this mission, but the rest of you have jobs to do. Owen, you’ll be above and behind the group; I want to know where the fighters are coming from before they get to us so that A and B flights can move to intercept. Chalky, you’re to take Vulture up top; HQ want to know what effect we’ve had, so after we’ve done you’re going to fly a route along the coast and take pictures of all five ports. And Wendy, Dreadnought will be accompanying the bomber group attacking Dunkirk. You’ll be fully loaded, but your priority is the fighters who get through us to the bombers; see if you can’t dissuade them from getting too close, I’ll leave it up to you how you do that. Questions?’

Owen’s face was contorted in fury, but his tone was deathly calm. ‘Was the decision to make Dreadnought the enemy’s primary target yours, or does that stupidity come from London as well?’

Wendy put her hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Owen, please.’

Abby gave him a cold look in return. ‘Owen, Wendy is a big girl. She knows how to handle Dreadnought and she knows what the stakes are today. As do we all. Yes, she will be a target, a very big and extremely juicy one, but she also has a sting, much more than any of the other bombers do and if she can draw them to her we might have a chance at protecting the rest of them.’

Owen shrugged off his wife’s hand and took a step closer to Abby, his hands curling into fists and voice almost a growl. ‘I want to know whose decision it was.’

Abby walked forward to meet him. She stared him in the eyes and didn’t back down, but while his attitude was purely aggressive hers was matter of fact and her voice was clear and without any anger when she answered. ‘Mine. I was tasked with using this squadron in the best way I could in order to accomplish this mission and that is what I am doing. We are soldiers, Owen, it is our job to lay down our lives to protect others and people in this squadron already have.’

Owen stared her in the eyes for long seconds and the pilots held their breath, wondering if he would really hit her and what it would do to the squadron if he did, but then he deflated with a sigh. ‘You’re right, of course. I’m sorry.’

Abby reached out and squeezed his shoulder. ‘For what it’s worth, I wish there was some other way to do this, but there isn’t, I’m sorry.’

‘I know, dammit, I know.’ He walked back to Wendy and took her in his arms.

The other pilots watched them, shifting uncomfortably as the awkward silence went on.

‘When?’

Abby tore her eyes from the embracing couple with difficulty and looked at Gwen. ‘We takeoff at twelve twenty.’

Gwen looked up at the clock over the stage behind Abby - it was a little before eleven. She nodded. ‘Plenty of time for another cup of tea, then. If you get on with the damn briefing, ma’am.’

There was a short silence, which was broken after a few seconds by sniggers from both Bruce and Mac, then suddenly all of the pilots were laughing as the tension drained from them.

Abby nodded gratefully at Gwen, but didn’t join in.

The Misfits rendezvoused with the first bomber wing that they had been assigned to just north of Canterbury at twenty-five thousand feet and they headed east-southeast together, crossing the English coast near Deal. The white cliffs shone brilliantly in the bright sunshine, but their beauty and majesty went completely unnoticed when the pilots and aircrew caught sight of the French coastline, many of them for the first time, as it appeared out of the haze thirty miles away. It wasn’t the land itself, or the fact that everything they could see across the water was in the hands of the enemy that gave them pause or took their breath away, rather it was the hundreds of destroyers, battleships and troop ships as well as thousands of smaller vessels gathered at various points along the coastline. This was the fleet that would carry the unstoppable Prussian army to their country, the threat that it was their job to try to destroy that day. Once and for all.

‘Bloody hell, there’s millions of the bastards!’

The comment, coming from one of the RAC bombers, had the Misfits laughing, but Abby sobered them up very quickly with only three words - ‘Eyes up, Badgers.’

The pilots of A and B flights lifted their gaze from the ports and immediately spotted what Abby was calling their attention to.

The trouble with assembling such large a force of bombers was that many of them had had to be in the air for more than an hour, giving plenty of opportunity for the Prussians’ own radar system to spot them and plenty of time for them to scramble forces to intercept.

It seemed that the Fleas weren’t nearly as demoralised as Whitehall had hoped and had put what looked like every fighter they owned in the sky to meet them.

There were three distinct groups of Fleas, each comprising more than fifty fighters, spread out along the French and Belgian coast, heading for the British aircraft, and Misfit Squadron would have to face one of them on their own - the RAC fighters from other squadrons, around a hundred of them, had been split between the other bomber groups, leaving the Misfits, with their longer range, to cover the two groups of bombers that were going the furthest and attacking the more important targets.

‘Well, at least we don’t need Chalky to tell us where they are.’ Mac’s sardonic comment in his broad Scottish accent came over the radio. It brought some laughter, but it was far more nervous than before as the pilots contemplated the task ahead of them.

‘Yes, thank you, Badger Six.’ Abby’s subtle admonishment brought them effectively back to radio discipline. ‘A and B flights, go to full throttle and take up stations. Prepare to jettison springs on my mark. You know the plan, people, stick to it or you’ll be buying the drinks for the next month.’

Abby had several plans in place for all eventualities. The plan in the case that the enemy was waiting for them was that they would accelerate ahead of the bombers, A flight climbing to two thousand feet above them and B flight a thousand feet above that, so that they could engage the fighters before they could get to the bombers. They planned to do a single pass, diving on the fighters, then pull around to do another. A flight would then stay with the enemy, trying to get them to engage in a turn fight, while B flight would try to pick off anyone that went for the bombers. The wing commander was fully aware that even the best thought-out plans in war usually didn’t survive the first shots being fired, but she had every confidence in her pilots and in the leaders of the pairs that they would break into and knew that they would fight to the best of their abilities.

As the Misfits increased speed and started to climb, leaving the bombers behind, Abby’s soft voice came over the radio. ‘Happy hunting, Dreadnought.’

Surprisingly, it seemed that the Fleas had orders to ignore the British fighters and go straight for the bombers, because the Misfits were met with barely any resistance to their first attack. None of the enemy had tried to match their altitude and any evasive manoeuvres that they had taken were perfunctory at best and didn’t deviate them much from their course to the bombers. These were almost suicidal tactics and the Misfits were able to take down six of the enemy fighters in their first pass, however, it did mean that, when they came back for their second crack at them, the Fleas were fast approaching the bombers and there was only just time to catch up with them and knock three more out of the sky before they were in among the heavier machines.

Three of the British bombers slid out of the formation as they took lethal damage, leaking black smoke from stricken hydrogen engines or simply turning over and diving as incapacitated pilots relinquished control on the machines, but they gave almost as good as they got and another two fighters fell out of the sky.

As Owen had predicted, the Fleas were moths around Dreadnought’s flame and for a while they were burned and went spinning away just like insects. Enemy pilot after enemy pilot tried his luck and were blasted out of the sky by the weight of metal coming from the big machine’s cannons, just one shell of which was sufficient to rip apart the fragile Muhlenberg MU9’s and Hock-Hund HH190’s that attacked her.

The heavier fighters, like the MU10’s, fared much better, though; they were able to take much more punishment than their smaller cousins and a couple of them managed to penetrate the shield of iron that Dreadnought was able to throw around herself. The first stitched a line of large holes across her wing, which the big aircraft barely noticed, but the second, following immediately behind his wingmate, was luckier. He hit the same wing at a slightly different angle and his heavy cannon blasted holes in the armour plating around two of the large aircraft’s six engines, which instantly flared into flame as the hydrogen ignited.

Dreadnought’s gunners got their revenge, immediately knocking both of the fighters out of the sky, but she was hurt and Wendy had to fight desperately to maintain control as the steam tank of one of the two engines burst, taking a large chunk of her wing and the entire engine with it, the hot vapour threatening to spin the huge aircraft like a top as it was released under immense pressure. The steam dissipated almost immediately, but her problems didn’t end there and she had to continue wrestling the controls, trying to correct for the suddenly uneven thrust, while her flight engineer and chief fitter, Roberta, desperately flicked switches in an attempt to extinguish the flames and stop them from making their way up the feed lines to the main hydrogen tanks in the fuselage and destroying the aircraft. Dreadnought creaked and groaned in protest as her airframe twisted under the pressure and entire pieces of Duralumin tore from the stricken wing, exposing the frame underneath, as the wind ripped at the damage, threatening to send the aircraft tumbling from the sky.

Gwen followed Abby as they weaved an unpredictable path through the British bombers, pursuing the nimble enemy fighters. It was second nature to her now; she had gotten to know her wingmate’s style so well over so many hours of flying with her that just seeing the situation around them was enough to know what the wing commander was going to do, when she was going to turn and which enemy she was going to attempt to destroy next. Because she didn’t have to concentrate so much on staying on Abby’s wing any more, she had plenty of time to look around and watch for anything that her leader might not have seen, which meant that she caught the flash when Dreadnought’s engines burst into flame. She gasped, unable to keep her eyes from the gigantic aircraft as it lurched and dipped, weaving drunkenly and threatening to tip over before Wendy regained some semblance of control.

She watched, unable to tear her gaze from the sight, as Dreadnought started to lose altitude, drifting down from its position just above the British bombers, and her lack of concentration almost killed her; a looming shape in front of her was the only warning she had of an impending collision with a double-aitch that was turning in front of her.

Her finger automatically pressed the button to activate her guns even as she yanked back on the stick and she was rewarded with the sight of the enemy fighter spinning away with half its wing missing.

Her inattention had meant that she had lost Abby, though, and she weaved through the bombers and fighters, searching for her.

Everywhere she turned there were aircraft going down. Below her she could see the remains of at least fifteen RAC bombers, easier to spot because of the black smoke that invariably poured from them. The fighters were much harder to see and she couldn’t afford the time to switch lenses and look for them, but if there weren’t more than eight or nine then the Misfits weren’t doing their job very well.

She continued to twist and turn, taking whatever shots she could, destroying at least two Fleas and possibly a third, while keeping an eye out for the rest of her squadron, looking to rejoin with Abby. At one point Swift and Hawk zoomed past about half a mile away on the tail of a pair of MU10’s, but she saw no sign of any of the other Misfits; it was just a mess of bombers and enemy fighters, spread out across the sky.

The shapes of the bombers changed as their bay doors opened and seconds later streams of iron arrow shapes fell from them. Gwen had been so busy that she hadn’t noticed that they had been approaching the French coast and was taken so much by surprise that she had to bank sharply to avoid crossing through one of the deadly curtains spewing from a bomber.

The bomb doors closed again and, their mission carried out, the remaining RAC bombers turned and began a gentle dive, accelerating hard back to the safety of the distant island, which was not much more than an indistinct green shape through the haze of smoke hanging in the air. Their course took them almost directly underneath the second wave of British bombers the Misfits had been tasked with protecting, following up ten miles behind, on a slightly different heading that took them to Belgium.

As the bombers turned for home, Gwen found herself in a patch of empty sky and was finally able to find the other Misfits - they were three or four miles away and a good four or five thousand feet lower, fighting a desperate action against almost two dozen Fleas around the stricken Dreadnought, who had managed to deliver her payload even though she was hurt and was being harassed as she attempting to turn towards home. The Misfits had abandoned the bombers to protect one of their own, which was perfectly understandable, but against their orders. It was just as well that most of the Fleas had been concentrating on Dreadnought anyway, otherwise casualties amongst the RAC bombers might have been even higher.

‘Badger Leader, this is Badger Two.’

‘Go ahead, Two.’ Abby’s voice was strained and her annoyance showed. ‘Where the hell are you, Gwen?’

‘Above you, a few miles away. Sorry, Leader, got sidetracked. Shall I come down to you?’

‘Negative, Two. Stay high and go help the second wave. Once Badger Ten is clear we’ll come to you.’

‘Roger, Leader. Two out.’

Reluctantly, Gwen turned away from her friends and put the fight to save Dreadnought out of her mind as best as she could as she raced towards the incoming bombers who were already under attack.

She had a minute or so before she caught up with the second wave and Gwen used the time to check Wasp. She had plenty of tension left in the spring, the spare had seen to that, and the handy little indicator Wendy had designed showed that she had used up a little under three-quarters of her ammunition. Satisfied that she could still fight she gave the aircraft itself a quick visual inspection and was shocked to see a gaping hole in her left wing, a hit that she hadn’t even noticed getting. It had missed her leftmost machine gun and the volatile ammunition supplying it by inches, but she would probably never know whether it had come from friend or foe.

With just a little bit more time to spare, she rolled her shoulders and turned her neck back and forth, trying to release some of the tension that always seemed to build up on missions, then took a deep breath before scanning the sky once more, wagging Wasp’s tail to look behind her to make sure that nobody was sneaking up on her and that there were no other enemies to worry about apart from the groups around the bombers and Dreadnought.

She used her final seconds of peace to smile at Richard’s photograph, then fixed her gaze back on the battle taking place in front of her.

There were ten or twelve enemy fighters, mostly MU9’s, engaging the bombers and Gwen pounced on them, not thinking twice about facing such high odds, just as she hadn’t when the eight Misfits had dived into more than fifty Fleas only a few short minutes ago, or when they had dived on twice their number of elite Barons over the Midlands.

The first Flea fell to her before they even knew they were there, an easy deflection shot as he turned and climbed after a run at the bombers blew his entire right wing off and he went spinning. She adjusted to fire at his wingman, but he turned upside down in a panic and dived away almost vertically. She let him go, knowing that he would be out of the fight for a long time, if he even bothered trying to climb back up to it at all.

She spotted her next target swinging round one of the big bombers and was ready for him as he came out the other side. Her first burst went wide and she cursed, but corrected instantly and gave him another second’s burst of her guns. This time she was rewarded by the sight of half of the MU9’s tailplane spinning away and the enemy pilot immediately pushed his nose down sharply, which must have made his eyes almost pop, and dived away. Once again she let him go; he was no longer a threat, and turned her attention to his wingman. He was smarter than the average Flea, though, and had veered away from her as soon as he had become aware of the threat and there were just too many bombers around him for her to get a clear shot. Going after him would mean flying in a straight line for too long, so she ignored him and turned, looking around for the next target.

Dull thuds shook Wasp, almost knocking the stick from her hand as a long line of holes magically appeared on her undamaged right wing next to the cockpit and pieces of her flaps flew away. She instantly kicked her rudder hard to yaw sharply away from the line of fire, simultaneously pulling back on her stick and flipping into a barrel roll to take her over a bomber and into the relative safety of its far side while she craned her neck, searching for her attacker.

She found not one, but three enemy aircraft on her six, an HH190 and two MU9’s, all blazing away with their guns as they tried to follow her desperate manoeuvre and she whispered an apology as the bomber she had used for cover took the majority of their shots and began to drop from the formation, leaving a cloud of white mist in its place as one of its steam tanks burst.

They chased her through the bombers, staying side by side and taking slightly different paths as she went over, under and around the RAC aircraft, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t shake them and they were a constant presence in her rearview mirror. One of them she could out turn and get behind, but she couldn’t do that with three, nor could she hope to outrun them; Wasp was fast, but she had been primarily designed for agility and the Prussian machines were faster, not by much, but enough to overhaul her in a race. She had two options then - turn and hope that the Flea whose path she turned into missed his shot, or dive, abandoning the bombers but possibly taking the three enemy fighters beyond where they could do any harm. Neither option was particularly attractive but she had to make a decision soon; they weren’t going to keep missing for long and she was fast running out of bombers to put between her and them.

The choice was no choice at all really and she knew she was going to have to risk the turn; she couldn’t abandon the bombers, no matter the danger to herself. She smiled at the photo on her instrument panel, then prepared to turn into the path of the HH; RAC pilots tended to believe the double-aitch pilots weren’t as good as the MU ones in dogfights.

In the end, she didn’t have to test that theory as a third option presented itself unexpectedly.

‘Need a hand, Badger Two?’

‘Not really, Badger Eight, but if you’ve made the effort to come all the way to Belgium you might as well do something. Just try not to miss and hit me, please.’

Kitty’s laugh filled Gwen’s ears as two aircraft, one red, white and blue and the other brown, streaked across her rear and two of the Prussians following her suddenly became a lot less airworthy than they had been previously.

Gwen could just picture the huge grin that must have been plastered over the American’s face and she smiled in return as she pulled back on her stick, moving out of the path of the last of the Fleas. She lost sight of it behind a bomber, but when she saw it next it was diving full throttle towards the coast, only a couple of miles ahead.

‘Badger Leader to all Badgers. Rendezvous at two thousand feet above the bomber group.’

As Gwen pulled up she scanned the sky around them. Aside for a few fleeing Fleas there were only British aircraft to be seen and, as she watched, the bay doors swung open and the bombers sent their explosive gifts tumbling away to the port of Ostend far below.

Hardly any aircraft from the second wave had been prevented from carrying out their mission and consequently far more bombs were dropped on Ostend than had been dropped on Dunkirk and as the Misfits turned for home with their countrymen they shared in the jubilation of the bomber crews as ship after ship and barge after barge was torn apart.

The pilots had very mixed feelings about the day’s mission when they landed; they were understandably jubilant at having shot down so many enemy fighters (the provisional count was in excess of thirty and likely to be closer to forty) and they were pleased with the success of the raid on Ostend, but they were also distressed by the loss of so many bombers in the first raid on Dunkirk and there was no word yet on the fate of Dreadnought - they had lost sight of her after they had seen off their attackers and climbed to help the second raid.

Abby informed them that they had been released for the day and the pilots hurriedly changed out of their flight gear, then congregated in the mess where they sat together, nursing drinks and swapping stories of their individual dogfights, but in a much more subdued manner than usual as they waited for news of their colleague.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before a call came on the radio that Dreadnought had made it as far as the RAC base at Hawkinge, near Folkestone. Her undercarriage had been damaged and she had been forced to make an extremely rough crash-landing. Wendy herself was fine, just a few scratches and bruised ribs from where her control yoke had dug into her stomach on landing, but she had lost two of her crew and Dreadnought was going to need a lot of work before it was airworthy again. The fitters at Hawkinge, which had been so damaged by Prussian bombing that they had no repair facilities, were working with Wendy and her crew, trying to get the giant aircraft safely dismantled and packed up for transport to Badger Base without causing further damage. They had been given permission to stay with the aircraft until it was done and before he could even ask, Abby told Owen that he could take one of the base’s transport aircraft to join his wife. He all but leapt from his seat and ran out of the mess to get into the air immediately.

More news trickled in over the course of the afternoon.

The first thing that they found out, just after lunch, was that none of the other bomber groups had fared nearly as well as the two that the Misfits had escorted; they had hardly shot down any enemy fighters and had lost most of their bombers, many before they managed to drop their payloads. Most of the British fighters had made it home, though, mainly because the Fleas had been so single-minded in their persecution of the bomber wings that they hadn’t had ammunition or time left for them.

In mid-afternoon Vulture returned from its mission. A Royal Guard Spitsteam had been standing by and it whisked the films away to Whitehall to be developed so the Misfits never got a chance to see them, but Chalky soon joined them in the mess.

He downed almost a whole pint of beer while the other pilots watched, then told them what he’d been able to see through the optical arrays that his aircraft was equipped with in addition to the cameras. ‘We did a good job on Ostend - I counted almost a hundred barges sinking or sunk and there were fires in many of the warehouses. Dunkirk was almost as thoroughly roughed up and we’ve probably got Dreadnought to thank for that.’

The pilots smiled happily; so far the news was good - those numbers were higher than the ones that had been projected for the two ports that they had been assigned to.

However, the smiles faded when Chalky’s face turned grim. ‘As for the other three ports... Damage was completely insignificant, there was barely any damage to the stockpiles that I could see and the invasion fleets were almost untouched.’

Abby nodded, matching his expression. ‘That was what we were expecting; we got word that most of the bombers were destroyed before they got to their targets.’ She turned to the assembled pilots. ‘We did our best and we all came home. Get plenty of rest and don’t drink too much, please, because I’m sure the Prussians will have an answer for us soon.’

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. Next weekend, check back in for the penultimate Chapter Eighteen. If you missed out on Chapter Sixteen you can go back and read it 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.