Suddenly, flashes of light off to the right. Thump! Thump!Thump! It takes a while to register. Thump! Thump! Thump! He is hit! The enemy bomber to the right has caught him, clearly outlined by the moon, closing his comrade from behind, and opened up fast. It is alert and accurate gunnery. Shells rip through the cockpit, destroying instruments, tear into the engine...a crashing deluge! In the crisis, deadly determined, Alison makes a split second decision. He presses the trigger to his six guns as he takes hits. The enemy ahead is squarely in his sight ring. The P-40 spits fire. It shudders and takes more hits. A shell crashes into the fighter's cockpit. Alison knocks a piece of burning phosphorous off his lap. The enemy bomber to his right rakes his fuselage. Disregarding it, he keeps up his fire on the bomber ahead. Now his shells begin to find the mark. It's a grim battle. Alison is gambling he can knock out the bomber ahead before being fatally damaged, or killed. His guns throw out almost a hundred fifty-calibre shells a second. He has a firepower advantage. Keeping the enemy ahead focused in the orange ring of his gunsight, ignoring the thud of hits on his own fighter, he piles up hits on the enemy ahead. Black smoke and oil stream back from his victim. Then the enemy pilot suddenly veers wildly left, out of formation. Baumler [his wingman], coming up fast from below, gets him in his sight and closes from behind. Not losing a second, Alison banks his stricken fighter into a sharp right turn, into the teeth of the enemy bomber firing on him, and allows the bomber to pull ahead, to his left. It is time for revenge.
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1. Night Scramble at Hengyang – 1942 – John R. Alison
2. Chase Over New Guinea – 1942 – John D. Landers
3. Battling Zeros Over Kunming –1943 - Bruce K. Holloway
4. Scratch Two of the Abbeville Boys – 1943 – James A. Goodson
5. Lightning Over Huron Gulf – 1943 – Jay T. Robbins
6. Cat and Mouse Near Emden – 1943 – Francis S. Gabreski
7. ME-109 at Six O’Clock – 1943 – John T. Godfrey
8. First Strike at Berlin – 1944 – Robert S. Johnson
9. A Game of Bluff at Sorau – 1944 – Henry W. Brown
10. Clash of Leyte’s Ormoc Bay – 1944 – Charles H. MacDonald
11. Surprise at Asch – 1945 – J.C. Meyer
12. Death of the Luftwaffe – 1945 – Joseph L. Thury
Each of the stories is well written and each provides a level of detail which holds the reader’s interest. In addition, each story is accompanied by an annotated diagram which helps the reader visualize the combat action and the locations of the pilots and their targets during the described engagement. See Common Knowlege for a sample of the writing style. (