with the North Sea.

"Not this day, my little Jerries!" Flight Lieutenant Barton-Woods' voice boomed over the radio. "Let's make the beggars pay for dropping bombs in our Channel, Green Flight! Give it to them!"

The last was more or less the signal that each pilot was on his own. Dave waited until he saw his flight leader swerve off to slam in at the Junkers to the right. Then he touched rudder, and with Freddy sticking right with him, swerved off after the other German raider. They were real close now, well within gun range, and as the pair slid out to take up attack positions the Junkers' gunners started throwing nickel jacketed lead. The wavy smoke of tracers whipped and zipped by a few feet over Dave's head. He laughed into his mike and dropped his nose and cut sharply off to the right. Freddy did the same, only off to the left.

No sooner had they started the cutting away maneuver than they cut right back in again. The German gunners saw them coming and fired their guns savagely, but those two R.A.F. lads tore in like a couple of man-made birds gone completely crazy. It was as though they both intended to fly right straight into the Junkers. Then when there were no less than a couple of split seconds left before just that would happen, Freddy Farmer's voice sang out in Dave's earphones.

"Right-o, Dave!" he shouted. "This one for us!"

They both jabbed their trigger button and sixteen Vickers machine guns poured a withering blast of destruction into that Junkers 88. For a few seconds the German raider continued to roar eastward. Then suddenly its port engine belched out a cloud of red flame and oily black smoke. Then as though the craft had hooked its left wing on some invisible wall in the sky, the Junkers staggered to the left and down. Its tail gunner kept up his fire as Dave and Freddy skipped past and zoomed up to dive attack again. But that German might just as well have tried to shoot at a couple of lightning bolts flashing by.

Cutting short their zoom Dave and Freddy rolled their Spitfires over and let them drop by the nose. Down they came again, holding their fire until the last few seconds. The Junkers now was more like a moving cloud of smoke than an airplane flying through the air. And when Dave and Freddy jabbed their trigger buttons again it was the death blow for that German raider. The right wing broke off clean at the stub, and carried the starboard engine along with it. From nose to tail the Junkers became no more than a moving ball of fire. Then suddenly the gas tanks let go. The whole sky was filled with barbs of darting flame and billowing clouds of black smoke. The sky trembled and shook ... and then the Junkers 88 just wasn't there any more. It was a shower of smoking and flaming debris slithering down into the North Sea.

"Good lad, Dave!" Freddy sang out. "Your bursts did it!"

"My bursts, nothing!" Dave called back to him. "I didn't even come close to the guy. That was your plane, Freddy. Congratulations!"

"Rot!" Freddy snorted into his disc mike, also known as the "flap" mike. "We'll split the beggar and each take half, eh? Oh, oh, Dave! The flight lieutenant's in trouble!"

It was true. Perhaps there was a better pilot in the other Junkers, or perhaps gunners with a better aim, or it was even possible Flight Lieutenant Barton-Woods had become careless for a moment or so. Anyway, he had not nailed his man, and the Junkers gunners were giving him quite an uncomfortable time as he zoomed up into the clear. Dave and Freddy didn't speak a single word between them. They simply wheeled across the sky in perfect attack formation, and then roared down on the Junkers.

Its rear gunner was no novice, and he had courage. He stuck to his guns and returned their own savage fire. Dave felt his plane quiver slightly, and knew that German bullets were hitting his ship. But he didn't swerve an inch. His wing howled down at the German and he held his fire until the right moment. This time he shouted the signal.

"Smack it, Freddy!"

Their guns hammered and yammered out their song, and Dave could clearly see their tracers zinging down into the German plane. No man-made airplane on earth could have withstood that blasting fire from the sixteen guns between the two youths. And that Junkers 88 was no exception to prove the rule. It burst into flame and went careening crazily off on one wing. Then it dropped by the nose, and started howling seaward in a vertical power dive. After it had dropped three or four hundred feet, five black dots popped out from it like peas out of a pod. They instantly became men in Dave's vision, and they slowly turned over and over as they fell down through the air. At the end of almost thirty seconds a puff of white shot up from each man's back. They spread out into parachute envelopes, and five German airmen drifted slowly down toward the surface of the North Sea where British motorboats waited to pull them in as captured prisoners.

Dave and Freddy didn't bother watching the five German airmen float downward. Instead they pulled up out of the dives, closed in on Flight Lieutenant Barton-Woods and took up formation positions. Their leader grinned at them, and they heard his voice coming over the radio.

"Stout work, you two," he said. "Made an awful mess of it, myself. But you two were along, so I knew everything would be fine. Well, let's toot on back home and report to the O.C."

CHAPTER TWO

Mysterious Orders

Less than half an hour later, the three pilots of 207 were reporting all details of the patrol to Squadron Leader Trenton, and the R.A.F. Intelligence officer who sat at his side. No matter how trivial a patrol may be, R.A.F. pilots always make a complete report upon their return to the home field. That way the ranking powers are always able to have a complete picture of the war in the air before them. In other words, every single scrap of information about a patrol is important, because you never can tell what it might mean in the whole scheme of things. For that reason the pilots not only made out their reports in writing, but made them by word of mouth, too.

"Good work, you two," the Squadron Leader said, and smiled at Freddy and Dave. "It's not such an easy job getting a Junkers 88. Those planes have a pretty fair amount of fire power. So getting two of them is a mighty good piece of work. And, oh yes, stay a bit, will you? I want to have a talk with you."

A few minutes later Flight Lieutenant Barton-Woods and the Intelligence officer headed off for the mess. As the door closed on them, Squadron Leader Trenton swung around in his chair and gave the two boys a long piercing stare. Then he suddenly clasped his hands on the desk and leaned forward.

"I say, you two," he spoke up, "have you gotten yourselves into a bit of trouble that might have been reported to the Air Ministry in London?"

Dave and Freddy looked blankly at each other for a brief moment, then returned their gaze to the squadron leader.

"Trouble, sir?" Dave echoed faintly.

"When, sir?" Freddy added. "And where?"

The squadron commander shrugged and looked completely at sea.

"I haven't the faintest idea," he said. "I was only asking you. Nothing happened when you two popped up to London for a day's leave last week?"

"Why, no, sir," Freddy answered promptly for them both. "We just nosed around and saw a couple of shows, that's all. We were both back here at the squadron by midnight."

"Why?" Dave put the question. "Has anything happened, sir?"

"I can't say," Squadron Leader Trenton murmured, and stared at them with a troubled look in his eyes. "Just after you took off on this last show, I received a phone call from Air Ministry. You two are ordered to report to Air Vice-Marshal Saunders bright and early tomorrow morning. You'd better go up to London tonight so's you'll be sure and be at Adastral House (R.A.F. name for the Air Ministry) bright and