Folks,

It was a busy day down at the Lizard Lick Tire Store, Coin Operated Laundry and 24-Hour Blood Bank. Those pesky man-sized Vampire Bats escaped from down there in the HWH archives and made an assault on the Blood Bank about dawn this morning. They miscalculated the hour and were caught in the street as the sun was coming up. It wsn't very pretty.

Perhaps it was C51's lost chronometer that mislead them? It has been missing for several days now. He only wore it as jewelery. It was worthless for telling the time. The thing was only correct twice a day. That was when Micky Mouse's hands were on the 12 and the 4. All of the bats staggered back badly sunburned and terribly thirsty. Once they were down in the vaults once more we welded the ventilation shaft shut again. No one dares go down there until the dust settles. There is a terrible battle going on between the thirsty bats and those beaver-sized rats. Dux put a drinking glass to the floor and listened through it. He says that it sounds like the rats are losing. He had no trouble whatsoever doing that because he was already flat on the floor with an empty glass.

The rats may be losing but you won't feel like a loser if you read the following story by jenrick.

IN THE CLEAR BLUE SKY
By: jenrick
HWH (continued)
Pg.50
09-16-2003


Clear blue sky, reminiscent of some long dead artists pastel creation reached for the downward curving infinity of the horizon. There it met the water, a much dark more serious shade of blue. A shade of blue that could kill a man in minutes with it’s cold. One would logically assume that the lighter blue was safer then, empty sky had never killed anyone.

These idle thoughts fluttered through the back of his brain as he glanced at the sky above the English Channel, their incessant rattling inside his skull did little to distract him from maintaining watch on his flight leaders wingtip. The three aircraft flew in a tight triangle of fabric and metal, the Vic it was called. The tight precision needed to maintain the formation prevented the wingman from searching the skies, as the slightest wobble could cause a collision. Paltry, as the flight leader was known, was in charge of finding the lone contact reported by the RDF stations.

“Tighten it up yellow, lets not look like a great gaggle of geese.” Paltry had a thin nasally voice, which was even more pronounced when pinched into his oxygen mask.

“Roger Yellow 1, should we stop flapping the wings then?” Yellow 3 had been branded Rubbish, on account of having a surname shared by an extremely poor quality beer.

“I think you’d be fine Yellow 3, with all the hot air you seem to have. Now tighten it up.”

A gentle pressure on the right rudder pedal brought Yellow 2 that much closer to Paltry; Rubbish inched forward minutely to maintain spacing.

“There he is! Three o’clock low, a single Dornier.” Paltry called the sighting while simultaneously banking to his right to get a clearer view. His sudden change of direction almost had disastrous consequences as he right wing barely cleared Rubbish’s prop. “Teacake, Yellow One calling. Single Dornier angels 10, moving to intercept.” Yellow 2 was gamely trying to regain his position as Rubbish ever so slowly started to slide back into formation. “Damn it all! Tighten UP!! I’ll have you both chopped if you don’t smarten up and start flying instead of acting like a bunch of girls on a church picnic!”

Cursing silently into their oxygen masks the rest of the element regained position and Paltry began to plan his attack. The standard doctrine dictated closing to four hundred yards before firing. The fight would fire until they had actually passed the target, and which point the flight would turn and setup for another run. The flight leader was responsible for the aiming; the rest of the flight merely stayed in formation and pulled the trigger when their leader did. Theoretically 24 Browning machine guns would shred any aircraft they hit.

“Were going to make a wide right turn to bring us in front of the cheeky *******, and descend all the way in. Attack number 1 when we level off in front of him. Go!”

The three Hurricanes rolled to their right and began a spiralling turn, being careful to keep their noses from dropping to far. All it would take was a moment’s inattention and the Merlin engine would die from lack of fuel. Several nerve racking minutes later they had levelled off five thousand feet lower and directly ahead of their prey.

“Ready boys? Remember let me do the aiming just follow my lead. Steady, steady…” When the Dorniers wingspan reached the inside ring of his sight Paltry mashed down the fire button on his grip. The expected rattle and roar didn’t come however. Paltry swore and again mashed the button with the same result. The Dornier was by now rather large and getting larger by the second. Thin golden orange tubes squirted from it, some coming rather close by. With a desperate lung, Paltry snapped his weapon switch to Arm from Safe and reached for the charging switch. The Air Ministry had ordered that no aircraft was to fly with live charged guns until it had sighted the enemy. Yanking the handle Paltry felt more then heard the clunk of the eight breeches slamming home from the compressed air released. He also felt more the heard the rounds of German Armor Piercing Incendiary ammunition that slammed into his Hurricane.

A tremendous racket arose as the propeller, now off centered and mauled began to oscillate off-center, warping the prop shaft. Flames raced down the cowling of the Hurricane as glycol and fuel drained from damaged lines. The roaring flames covered the canopy in a seething mass in an instant. Paltry screamed in horror and rammed the stick forward trying to drop out of the line of fire. This caused the float of the Merlin’s carburetor to become stuck in the closed position starving the engine of fuel. The momentary increase in line pressure caused a small crack in the fuel line to rupture, turning a potentially survivable fire into a killing inferno. Raw fuel sprayed from the ruptured line filing the inside of the cowling with partial atomized fuel, the heat from the flames instantly ignited the new fuel, which once again raised the temperature.

Yellow 2 broke to his left almost as soon as he saw flames spurt from Paltry’s nose. He managed to gain several hundred feet of separation in the next seconds as Paltry nosed over. Rubbish had nosed over trying to stay in formation for one fateful second. Lodged within the nose of a Hurricane almost directly behind the instrument panel is the glycol tank and behind this the fuel tank. As fuel is used more and more free space is left in the fuel tank, giving room for vapors to accumulate. The heat from the fire on and inside of Yellow 1’s cowling raised the vapors past their ignition point, causing them to expand and rupturing the fuel tank. This freed the remaining liquid fuel to vaporize and also combust. With a stupendous roar Yellow 1 exploded into dirty orange and black ball of fire. Separated by less then 20 feet Yellow 3 was immediately subject to a wash of burning fuel, and a through scrubbing of high-speed metal fragments. The fire mattered little; Rubbish had been subjected to the aerial equivalent of a close range shot gun blast to the torso.

The over pressure of the explosion threatened to swat Yellow 2 out of the sky, it did serve however to mask the hundreds of pops and shudders he would have otherwise felt and heard from the shrapnel piercing his aircraft. Wrenching hard back on the controls he managed to level out, a quick survey revealed numerous holes in the tail and along the aft fuselage. Miraculously the tail was intact, and all of the controls seemed to still be working. A glowing cinder caught his attention for a moment till he realized it was in fact a burst of fire from the Dornier. The Dornier that had killed two of his squadron mates.

The Dornier that had left him alive.

“Teacake this is Yellow Flight. Two kites are destroyed, I’m severely damage, returning to base. No score”

With a last glance at over his shoulder at the now shrinking Dornier Yellow 2 lowered his nose and turned towards home.