The fog was so thick it swallowed sound. Only the low growl of Merlin engines warming up and the occasional clank of a ground-crew spanner broke the stillness. Eight Spitfire Mark IXs sat in a perfect line, their elliptical wings dripping condensation like tears.
Lieutenant James “Jimmy” Callahan, Boston Irish, twenty-four, leaned against his aircraft, Miss Behave, chewing a piece of gum he’d been saving since Brooklyn. His leather A-2 jacket still carried the faint smell of his mother’s kitchen (cigarettes and Sunday gravy). He tapped a rhythm on the fuselage with his gloved fingers: da-da-da-dum, da-dum, the opening bars of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”
Across from him stood Flight Lieutenant Henry “Hank” Whitmore, twenty-seven, Oxford drawl, hair the colour of wet sand. His Spitfire, Piccadilly Rose, bore a fresh painting of a red rose beneath the cockpit (his sister’s idea before she’d been killed in the Blitz). Hank’s hands never left the crumpled photograph in his pocket: him, his brother Edward, and their mother on Brighton pier, 1938. Edward’s grin was frozen forever at nineteen.
Jimmy spat the gum into the grass. “Right, Your Lordship. Today’s the day I bag five Jerries before breakfast. You lot can have your tea and crumpets after I’m done painting swastikas on my bird.”
Hank didn’t laugh. His eyes were fixed on the eastern horizon where the first pale blade of light cut the fog. “Got a letter yesterday,” he said, voice barely louder than the idling engines. “Edward’s kite went down off Dunkirk. Spitfire, same mark as these. Mum wrote, ‘Come home, Hank. It’s enough.’”
Jimmy’s tapping stopped. “Jesus, Hank. I… I didn’t know.”
Hank pulled the photograph out, edges soft from months of handling. “He was nineteen. Thought he was immortal. Just like you do.”
The ground crew chief bellowed, “Pilots to cockpit! Five minutes!”
Jimmy kicked at the gravel. “Look, I talk big because if I don’t, I’ll think about the odds. Twenty-two yesterday, twenty-one today. We’re all borrowed time.”
Hank’s jaw tightened. “Then let me lend you some of mine. You fly for glory. I fly because Edward can’t. So today, if I have to choose between another kill or dragging your sorry arse back across the Channel, I pick you. Every time. No medals required.”
Jimmy stared, the cocky grin gone. For the first time since he’d arrived at Manston, he saw the weight Hank carried in those tired eyes. “Deal,” he said quietly. “I stick to your wing like glue. You go down, I go down. You make it home, I make it home. Brothers, not just squadron mates.”
Hank extended his hand. Jimmy gripped it hard. Two gloved hands, trembling from cold and something far heavier.
The klaxon screamed. Engines roared to full throttle. Ground crew yanked chocks away. One by one, the Spitfires taxied, propellers slicing the fog into ribbons.
Jimmy’s voice crackled over the R/T as they lifted off. “Piccadilly Rose, this is Miss Behave. I’ve got your six, Hank. All the way.”
Hank’s reply came soft but steady. “And I’ve got yours, Jimmy. Let’s bring Edward’s little brother home.”
Eight Spitfires thundered into the dawn, wingtip to wingtip, climbing through the cloud layer into a sky painted blood-red by the rising sun.
They weren’t just pilots anymore. They were a promise. Two enemies of the same sky, bound by something stronger than orders, stronger than nations.
Somewhere over the Channel, the war waited. But for the first time, neither flew alone.
