609 Squadron, she discovered from the orders, was at Biggan Hill these days, an airstrip about fifteen miles southeast of central London. When she walked into the Nissen hut that did duty as squadron barracks, David Crooke looked up from his game of bridge and said, “Good Lord, look what the cat dragged in!”
“Hello, David,” she said. Good to find at least one of the Battle of Britain veterans still in the squadron, even if they hadn’t known each other well. He was a flying officer now, too, she saw. A moment later, she noticed the ribbon for the Distinguished Flying Cross above his left breast pocket. “What did you get the gong for?”
He shrugged an elaborate shrug. “Staying alive, mostly. Surprised they haven’t inflicted one on you, too.”
That was British underplaying, nothing else but. You earned a DFC; they didn’t just hand them out. She asked, “Who’s commanding the squadron now?”
“Flight Lieutenant Roland Prosper Beamont just took over,” Crooke replied. Seeing the look on her face at the fancy handle, he added, “He goes by ‘Bee.’ He’s a good egg.” He pointed back to the far end of the hut, where a door probably led into the slightly roomier and more private quarters a squadron leader could boast. She walked over and knocked on the door.
“Who’s that?” came a voice from within.
“Flying Officer Earhart reporting, sir.”
The door opened. Beamont might or might not have been half her age. He did seem to wear command easily, though. “Welcome! Do come in. I hear you were daft enough to prefer us to the Yanks.”
“I get to keep flying this way, sir.”
“Daft,” he repeated, but he stood aside to let her past, then closed the door behind them. Waving her to a folding chair, he asked, “Where does your score stand?”
“I have four, sir—two with this squadron in 1940, two since.”
“One to go, then. To the more immediate point, what kind of accommodations can we give you? David says you used a tent before, but you transferred out before the weather got too nasty to make that pleasant.”
“Yes, sir.” She described how she’d arranged things with the Eagles, leaving out the time that pilot tried to molest her.
Beamont idly scratched his chin. “Corner spots are taken here. Do you mind a tent for a little while, so we can give the bloke we oust time to shift his gear?”
“That’d be fine, sir. Thank you. As long as it doesn’t start snowing, I can stay in the tent.”
“I heard you were a trouper. I see I heard right. Now, what were you flying in 71 Squadron?”
“The Spitfire V.”
“Well, we have some. We still fly them now and again,” the squadron CO said. “But what we mostly do is go hunting the Focke-Wulf fighter-bombers that hit-and-run across the Channel. You’ll know about those, I expect?”
A.E. nodded. “I sure do, sir. I went after a 109 like that one time. He dumped his bomb in the ocean and scooted home to France.”
“Jolly good. The 190’s a better plane in the role, though. Even with a bomb under its belly, it can give a Spit trouble. That’s why we’re switching over to the Typhoon. It’s faster, and those four 20mms pack a punch like your Joe Louis. If you can fly a Spit, you shouldn’t have any trouble with it.”
“Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. That’s what I’m here for.”
Beamont eyed her. “Good heavens, where would we be if everyone had that attitude? In Berlin by now, I daresay.”
The tent they gave her was bigger than the one she’d had when she was with the squadron before. If she found some way to keep the inside halfway warm in winter, she thought she might like it better than a cot in the Nissen hut. It wasn’t much privacy, but it was more than she’d have there.
As for the Typhoon … She saw what Beamont meant right away. That it could do more than a Spitfire was obvious from the moment she first got airborne in one. Just for flying, though, she would have rather stayed in a Spit. It had what struck her as the perfect combination of grace and power. The Typhoon did what it did very well, but did it by brute force.
She soon found she wasn’t the only pilot who felt that way. “It’s like measuring thoroughbreds against Clydesdales, isn’t it?” David Crooke said. “You’d sooner ride the racehorse, but if you’ve got to haul a load of bricks you’ll take the Clydesdale every time. Well, right now we’re in the brick-hauling business.” She nodded. So did several other flyers at the mess table.
The squadron soon moved from Biggan Hill down to RAF Manston on the Kentish coast, to be closer to the English Channel and to raiders coming from France. WAAFs there were quartered in the Ursuline convent at the village next door. A.E. kept her tent by the men’s barracks. No one said a word about it.
While she flew patrols over the ocean and over southern England, she thought about going down to France and shooting up anything that moved. Sure as the devil, the Typhoon would be great at that. Other squadrons were doing it, but not 609, not right this minute. Everybody had a particular role to play. It was like a movie (and, God willing, would turn out better than Eagle Squadron).
When she mentioned going down to France to Beamont, he quirked an eyebrow at her. “Funny you should say that. I’ve been having the fitters dim the lights on the instrument panel and the reflector sight in my cockpit so they don’t ruin my night vision. I want to fly down there after dark and give those Nazi buggers a little surprise.”
A.E. had all she could do not to clap her hands in glee. “What a wonderful idea! What does the brass think of it?”
He shrugged with studied nonchalance. “If I come back alive, maybe they’ll let others try it, too.”
Over the next week or two, he shot up several military trains on the Calais-Paris line. Before long, the electricians started modifying the cockpit lights in other planes, too.
The Germans hit back when they could. Thicker cloud cover let more Luftwaffe planes sneak across the Channel. They might not bomb very accurately, but they did some damage and reminded England it was in the war. A.E. hardly noticed when 1942 passed into 1943.
Groundcrew men painted yellow bands on the Typhoons’ wings. The new planes looked enough like F-W 190s that enthusiastic antiaircraft gunners sometimes fired on them. She had that happen to her once. Some of the things she said when she got back to the field at Manston made the other pilots look at her as if they’d never seen her before.
“I had no idea you talked that way,” one said, still wide-eyed.
“I don’t usually,” she answered. “But it’s bad enough when the Jerries try to kill us. When my own side does, too …”
With the new recognition signal, the fools on the ground opened up on their own aircraft less often. A.E. promised herself she’d shoot back if they ever did that to her again. Luckily, she didn’t have to find out whether she meant it.
Before long, the sign for Tiffies changed to a white nose and two white-lined black stripes on the bottom of each wing. A.E. didn’t see how the new pattern made any great difference, but it was decreed from On High and so had to be done.
She flew her patrols. She had enough experience to understand that most of the time she wouldn’t come across anything interesting at all. Long, dreary hours over the North Sea and the English Channel had drilled that knowledge into her. Not spotting anything was all right as long as nothing was there to spot. You had to stay alert, though. Missing something that was there didn’t bear thinking about.
And so she didn’t miss the little flicker of motion at the very edge of visibility. She swung her Typhoon southwest and went to see what it was. That it was heading north raised her suspicions. The silhouette looked a lot like that of the plane she flew, but a 190 would. It was why her fighter was marked the way it was.
She maneuvered to keep her plane between the sun and the stranger. Before long, she saw its engine cowling was dark. It had white-edged black crosses on its wings. She reported her position and said “Attacking the target” as she shoved the stick forward and dove.
It was the easiest kill she’d ever made. The F-W pilot had no idea she was in the neighborhood till she fired the 20mms. The big, heavy rounds slammed into the cockpit and fuselage. Trailing black smoke, the 190 tumbled toward the ground. The enemy flyer didn’t get out. She would have bet she’d killed or badly wounded him in that first moment.
“Target is destroyed. Returning to base,” she said.
“Acknowledged,” said the voice in her earphones, and then, “Well done.”
She did a victory roll when she flew over the field at RAF Manston. The groundcrew men all congratulated her on the kill after she landed. None of the other pilots said a word, though. She couldn’t decide whether she felt more hurt or miffed. She’d thought they liked her, but …
The silence persisted through boiled beef and soggy potatoes at supper. After the squadron had finished, David Crooke stepped out for a moment. He came back with a cake on a tray: a rectangle iced in white, with a black A at the top left corner and another one, upside down to it, at the bottom right. A big black spade sign dominated the center.
“For Amelia!” he said loudly. “Our new ace!”
Everybody whooped. She realized they’d been playing the same game as a pitcher’s teammates when he was throwing a no-hitter. Till the moment the cake came in, they hadn’t let on that they knew a thing. “Speech!” someone bawled, and they all took up the cry.
A.E. got to her feet. She didn’t like speaking in public, but the lecture circuit and teaching at Purdue had taught her how. And these were friends after all, sure enough. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re a pack of loonies, every goddamn one of you, and I’m awful glad you let me stay a part of—this.” When she threw her arms wide, she tried to take in not just the mess hall, not just the strip at Manston, but the whole RAF.
Their cheers said she’d done it. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever been happier.