Air Stories, November 1937 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DUSTMEN DON’T CARE Heaving up, he stared round and was thankful to see his badly-frightened companion still alive. ‘*T don’t like this machine, sir,’’ yelled the man, ducking and clinging on to his Scarff mounting. ‘‘ This thing don’t act like it ought. The movement goes kinda queer, sir ae He was fiddling agitatedly as he shouted, and casting apprehensive glances at the forward gun. Nobby gave an exasperated laugh and shouted in return. ‘* All right,’’ he bellowed. ‘‘ Better not touch anything on the whole flying box of tricks, or it’ll probably blow-up ! I suppose Mr. Edison’s own observer is used to it. I ought to have brought him. Well, we’ll just see the patrol home.’’ ACHINES flying towards each other at a combined speed of somewhere around two hundred and fifty miles an hour do not take long to meet, and in a few moments the homing squadron were passing directly beneath the Major with some of their pilots raising an arm to wave a greeting. Nobby kicked over the rudder to turn round and follow them, high up in the rear, in his position of fatherly protection. But even as he did so, there was a sudden howling drone—then a vicious jarring stutter which appeared to issue from the sun itself. Nobby hunched his shoulders and for a moment rubbed shoulders with death as a bullet-hail from an unseen, diving Fokker ripped his dashboard to splinters and tore long strips of fabric out of the centre-section. Then, acting purely by instinct, he was hard over in a vertical turn, with his engine full out and his stick forward as he dived after the plunging enemy. Since a man moves solely by instinct when fighting for his life in the air, Major Nobby Clarke once again indus- triously pressed gun-controls that weren’t there. The result was that a diving Fokker pilot, who was momentarily within the Bristol’s ring-sights, went on living. As a matter of fact he lived so lustily that, in the next moment, he had swerved round at a sharp angle, flattening his dive and coming up in a loop which reversed the position. Whilst Nobby was grabbing blindly for that swivelling gun control-wheel, the Fokker turned flat on its back and German Spandau bullets once again missed the Major’s head by inches, shuddering in a hail through his left wing-bay. The rear-seat gunner on the Bristol had by now managed to take an active part in the proceedings. He found the catch which released the gun mounting, but the mounting moved a great deal more quickly than he expected. Actually it had specially been redesigned so that its movement could be helped by pressing one of two pedals on the floor, which gave it an extra boost to the right or left, and the rear-seat gunner was treading on the right pedal, without knowing it. The gun came round, registered on the Fokker’s tail for an instant, and that red tail suddenly showed streamers of fabric as though it had been pawed bya giant cat! The gunner was pleased. As he hung on by teeth and eyebrows in the way of aerial gunners, whilst the Bristol seemed to be trying to climb up its own exhaust- pipe, he left off shooting and tried to haul the mounting to the left. Whereupon he ceased being pleased, for only his unconscious pressure on the pedal had previously made such a movement im- possible. Now it kept the gun moving to the right, sweeping it right round so that the underpart of its water-jacket clanged tunefully on the back of Major Clarke’s head ! Three-parts stunned, gasping, and very nearly going up in flames with temper, Nobby ducked down in his seat, saw the Fokker flashing by, and expected instant death. But in spite of the inventive genius of the absent Edison, Death found no work to do that afternoon. The Fokker, witha shattered elevator-control, was now glid- ing ruefully away homewards. In any case it is doubtful whether the German pilot would have tried anything more, for a couple of the Dustmen’s afternoon- patrol had realised what was happening and had turned back. 387 COMIC OO® ©