Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

AIR ADVENTURER hurtled through the air as the one- pounders’ shells struck the engine block and detonated. The engine—what was left of it—dropped from the black cloud and plummeted toward the earth. A breeze struck the cloud of smoke and it drifted away: What had been a sleek, fast single-seater with a pilot at the controls no longer existed. The one- inch shells had blasted the ship out of the air. 3 “What a shot! What a shot, kid!” Bill shouted. ‘‘That’ll teach that pilot a lesson he’ll never get over.” “Gosh, Bill. He had it coming to him.” Sandy grinned happily. “A di- rect hit the first time I tried. Gosh!” “They'll try to come up underneath us now,” Bill said as he leveled the big transport. ‘I’m locking the control and giving the automatic pilot a chance to do his stuff. I’m going down below. Give ’em everything you've got. I'll try to keep ’em busy when they come un- derneath us.” HE WAS out of the pilot’s seat and down the steps to the mid-section of the transport in three jumps. Quickly working the mechanism to set the re- tractable turret in motion he strapped himself in. A few seconds later he was suspended in mid-air in the tiny bucket that spun 45 around at the slightest touch on the con- trols. As the first gray plane dove and sped back to attack under the tail, Bill’s fingers, tightened on the firing trip of the fifty-caliber machine gun. The air be- tween the single-seater and the turret was suddenly laced with white stream- ers. The streamers dropped as Bill cor- rected his aim [he oncoming. plane took the full force of the shattering 1m- pact of those powerful fifty-caliber bul- lets. They tore the prop to a thousand ‘pieces and drove into the high-powered motor as though they were being driven into a mud bank. The windshield and face of the sur- prised pilot disappeared as though a Houdini had snapped them up his sleeve. smoke billowed from the housing of the stricken plane as it yawed wildly and burst into flame. The nose of the pilot- less plane dropped and it went plummet- ing toward the Mediterranean eighteen thousand feet below. For the next thirty seconds Bill Barnes thought he was on a merry-go- round that had gone insane. With his eye glued to his gun sights he fired burst after burst at the attacking planes as they came toward him with their guns belching fire and death. His face was black and grimy as he wiped the per- spiration out of his eyes. His whole body was soaked with it. The inclosed turret had become a Turkish bath. The fumes from his gun were strangling him. The sharp roar of Sandy’s one- pounder came faintly to his ears as his head began to whirl. The huge trans- port was keeping, steadily on its course as he worked the raising mechanism and stuck his head above the level of the transport deck. He drew great gulps of fresh air into his burning lungs and saw that not a single bullet had touched the retractable turret while he had been suspended below the belly of the plane. He rubbed his grimy hands across his aching eyes and half staggered up COmicloo Sj CO