‘You let him go?!?’

A stunned silence filled the conference room in Buckingham Palace as all eyes turned from Abby, who had just finished giving a detailed report of the battle with the Barons, to Gwen.

She nodded. ‘Yes, sir. I escorted him as far as the coast and then turned back.’

‘You... you...’

Sir Douglas sputtered, lost for words, but Scarlet neatly removed the need for him to find them, leaning over from her seat next to him and laying her hand on his arm. ‘Don’t be such a bore, Dougy dear, you know what she did was the right thing, the decent thing, dare I say it the British thing to do. Isn’t that right, Your Maj?’

King George had been following the conversation gravely from his place at the head of the table, stroking his beard with a frown, but he grinned at Scarlet’s question and winked at her. ‘Indubitably, my dear Scarlet. Indubitably.’

There had been a pleasant surprise waiting for Gwen when she landed at Hawkinge after escorting Gruber a short way out to sea, a bright spark of hope in the darkest day in the squadron’s history - as she taxied towards the standby point, she spotted not only a squadron of Spitsteams parked there, but also several Misfit aircraft. They were definitely worse for wear, but they were there, which meant the pilots were alive.

She parked Wasp on the end of the line of aircraft next to a battered Spitsteam and switched off, then reached out to take the photo off the instrument panel. ‘Sorry, darling.’ She put the picture in her pocket, then pulled back her canopy, taking a moment to savour the warm late-summer breeze on her face before climbing out to greet her friends, who were crowding around, looking up at her in expectation.

Not only was Kitty there, but so were Abby, Derek, Scarlet and Wendy and they crowded around her as she slid to the ground on tired legs, bombarding her with questions - they had seen her fly by with Gruber, seemingly in formation with him, and were dying to know what had happened.

She told them, but skipped many of the details because she was desperate to find out what had happened to everyone else in the squadron.

Scarlet had been at Badger base when the air raid warning had come. She had gotten Hummingbird off the ground just before the bombs had started to fall and assured them that the people on the base had had plenty of time to get into the underground shelters the base was equipped with. She had hid in the trees a few miles away and then after the raid had gone she had done a flyby to check out the damage. She reported that the hangar had taken several direct hits, the airstrip was a mess and several of the other buildings were in flames, but that the airmen and women were already making repairs. The barracks buildings were almost completely untouched, as were Wendy’s workshop in the woods and the barracks hall and to everybody’s relief she also reported that the mess and the beer supply were intact.

Abby had struggled with Dragonfly the whole way, but managed to land safely - “a piece of cake” she told a sceptical Gwen with a shrug - and her aircraft would only require minor repairs.

Swift’s tail had all but gone, but somehow Derek had managed to land her safely and, like Dragonfly, the aircraft would fly again soon.

Ballerina’s top wing had been completely ripped off, knocking off about a foot of vertical stabiliser and the rudder in passing, but Monty had still managed to find Hawkinge and crash land on the grass. The aircraft had been badly damaged, but was probably salvageable and had been put with Dreadnought, which was disassembled and sitting in a hangar next to the airstrip. Monty had broken his left arm in the rough landing and was in the medical building having it set and plastered as they spoke.

They had news of the other pilots as well - Owen had tracked each Misfit as they had been forced from the fight and Abby had already been to Hawkinge’s communications shed to speak to him. He was still up in the sky with Chalky, watching what was left of the Prussian raids as they crossed back over the channel.

Bruce had crash landed Devil in a field near Rochester and was waiting there for fitters from Badger Base to pick him up.

Mac had managed to get out of Swordfish and had used his glidewings to get all the way to the outskirts of Maidstone where he had walked into a pub, ordered a pint, then promptly been arrested because they couldn’t understand his thick Scottish accent and thought he was a Prussian.

There was no sign of Penelope, though, and it was a nervous hour, spent hanging around the communications shed and pestering the operators, before they got a phone call from a hospital in Folkestone telling them that she was there, in critical condition but alive.

Cheetah had come apart around her and, still strapped to her seat, she had been thrown from the cockpit as it had disintegrated around her, unconscious from a blow to the head, with two machine gun rounds in her left thigh and a jagged piece of shrapnel sticking completely through her left forearm. She had regained some semblance of consciousness only a few thousand feet above the ground, after having tumbling head over heels for a couple of miles and barely managed to gain enough awareness of what was going on to struggle out of her straps and deploy her glidewings before hitting the ground hard, breaking her other leg. Thankfully, she had come down close to a village and everybody had been in the streets watching the fight taking place overhead. They had put her in the back of the local policeman’s car and rushed her to the hospital. Her tight G suit had apparently saved her life, keeping pressure on her wounds and stopping her from bleeding too much before they were able to transfuse her.

When the news about Penelope came in, the Misfits were finally able to relax and when Owen and Chalky landed half an hour later they found them in the bar, released from duty and making a heavy dent in the RAC base’s supplies.

Because of the cloud cover rolling in from the continent there had been no further raids that day, except for one much smaller one on the Spitsteam factory at Southampton which had been beaten off by regular RAC fighters. There were no enemy raids in the offing the next day either and no sorties to fly, which was just as well because the squadron only had two functioning fighters left to put in the air - Wasp, with minor damage, and a completely untouched Hawk.

There were fairly strong rumours flying around that they were going to be supplied with stock Spitsteams or Harridans, but when reconnaissance flights over France and Belgium showed the invasion forces packing up and streaming away from their coastal stations, heading east and south, that idea was apparently discarded and word came in the afternoon that Misfit Squadron were officially grounded until their machines could be repaired. Shortly after that another message arrived, but this one summoned them to Buckingham Palace the next day for an audience with the King.

They travelled up to London by train in the morning and were reunited with Mac and Bruce at The Dorchester. The two men had gotten to the city the night before and after check in had proceeded directly to a nearby pub, where they had attracted a lot of attention to themselves and had been bought dozens of drinks by civilians eager to hear their stories. They had apparently returned to the hotel around midnight and promptly vomited copiously on the steps. When she arrived, Abby was quietly taken to one side by the manager and told that any favours that were owed to her had been fully cashed in and that after their stay the Misfits were to be relegated to the ranks of paying customers.

The Misfits spent a couple of hours relaxing in the two suites that Abby had still managed to get the hotel to part with for the night, before putting on their dress uniforms and making their way down to where two enormous black Rentley-Joyce autocars were waiting to take them to Buckingham Palace.

The meeting at the Palace was very different from the dinner to which the three junior Misfits had been invited; it took place in a conference room and because it involved matters of the utmost military import the only people present were the Misfits, the heads of the armed forces, the cabinet ministers and the King himself.

After Scarlet had so adeptly calmed Sir Douglas’ indignation and forestalled all thoughts of punishment for Gwen’s chivalric, but perhaps misguided actions, the atmosphere became rather more relaxed and the King quickly brought the meeting to a close and led them into the salon next door where a buffet was waiting for them along with Princess Elizabeth and a few dozen courtiers.

The Misfits were immediately drawn into conversation and the ministers especially were curious about the pilots that had become such heroes to the nation in such a short time.

Despite having the King’s approval of her decision to let Gruber go, Gwen was avoided by the people who had been in the meeting and instead was approached by a couple of the courtiers. The two men turned out to be Mr Rentley and Mr Joyce, the spring and autocar manufacturers, and she ended up getting more information from them about advances in spring technology than they did from her about the Misfits and their activities.

In a short break in the conversation, while the three of them got refreshments from the buffet, Gwen noticed Kitty leaving the room with Princess Elizabeth. They were probably going to visit her workshop, most likely to continue the discussion they had started about electricity and electrical weapons the night of the party. Gwen knew she should have felt slightly hurt that the two were going off without her, after all the invitation to the Royal Laboratories had been for both of them, but she found that she wasn’t at all; not only did the Princess’s interests more closely align with the American’s, but Gwen had been avoiding any chance of being alone with Kitty. She had yet to speak with the young woman about the night of the party and still didn’t quite know what exactly she was going to say, especially since she had removed the attachment for her husband’s photo from her instrument panel and decided to move on with her life.

That was a worry for another day, though, because right then the King was walking towards her, his eyes fixed firmly on her and she couldn’t afford to be distracted in the face of her monarch.

‘I have something for you, Aerial Officer.’ The King held out his hand and the Marshal of the Court, standing by at the ready as always, handed him a tightly rolled piece of paper tied with a red ribbon and sealed with red wax. ‘Your pardon, as promised.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Gwen took it from him and a huge weight she hadn’t even been aware she was carrying was lifted from her shoulders.

‘I predict great things for you, Gwen, and you don’t need something silly like that hanging over your head; there are too many people in this world who would set more store by that conviction than they would your countless merits and achievements. So, with the permission of Sir Douglas and the blessing of sky commodore Campbell as the accusing officer, I have had the incident expunged from your records. The commodore sends her apologies by the way and asked me to tell you that she hated the fact that she had no choice in the matter. She is glad that you have landed firmly on your feet, though, as are we all!’

King George gave her a wink, then beckoned for Abby to join them.

‘Damn good showing, Dame Lennox, damn good.’ The King pronounced.

Abby gave him a small bow. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘I want Misfit Squadron back in the air as soon as possible. If there is anything you need, name it and I will make sure you get it.’

Abby inclined her head at Gwen. ‘I already have exactly what I need, sir.’

‘Good, good!’ The King gave them each a smile and a nod before moving off to fulfil his duty to make sure that everybody in his presence had at least a modicum of his time.

The pilots watched him go, then Abby turned to Gwen. ‘Looks like you’re going to be working on our aircraft a lot sooner than I thought and with your expertise next time we’ll really show the Barons what for!’

Gwen smiled. ‘I can’t wait.’

Thank you so much for reading ‘The Battle Over Britain’, 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. If you missed out on Chapter Nineteen 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.