“Two sections scramble!” The cry rang out from the open window of the operations building, sending four flyers racing for their Spitfires. By the time the fastest, Lieutenant Terence Hicks, reached his sleek fighter and hopped onto the wing, his rigger had already dropped the heavy parachute onto the seat. His armorer hurriedly checked the machine guns in the wings as Terence quickly ran through the starting checklist for the massive Merlin engine directly in front of him.

In the other three planes on the flight line, three more pilots were going through their preflight procedures as quickly as they could. Pilot Officer John Hartman was an American who had enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and come across the Atlantic to fight the Nazis. His wingman, Pilot Officer Donald McGregor, was an unintelligible Scot whose radio calls puzzled the entire squadron. Lieutenant Hicks’ own wingman, Neil Gaines, was one of the few enlisted pilots in the RAF, holding the lowly rank of Flight Sergeant.

Within a minute of the first scramble call, the four silent Merlins roared to life. The Spits’ three-bladed propellers whipped the air and a buzzing sound, like that of giant hornets, rose over the field. The pilots ran up the engines and signaled to the waiting ground crew to remove the chocks that held the tires in place. With a lurch, the three-ton fighters leaped forward and accelerated down the grass runway towards the tree-lined edge. Hicks, in the first plane, lifted off and immediately began retracting his wheels. Hartman was more of a daredevil and began to turn away from the field almost as soon as he was airborne. McGregor waited until he was almost two hundred feet in the air before he felt safe enough to bring up the undercarriage. Last off the field, Gaines followed Hicks’ lead and raced to catch up with the climbing Lieutenant.

“All right everybody, close up!” Hicks called impatiently into his microphone as he waited for the others to reach him. Hicks was a very dedicated and businesslike pilot and he never tolerated any inefficiency in his flight.

“With you, Shrike Leader,” came the response of Sergeant Gaines. “Damn he’s good,” thought Hicks as he watched the young pilot take up station off his right wing. The other two pilots straggled into formation on his left side seconds later, and the group climbed for the clouds and what they hoped was a relatively small enemy force.