As the Tiger tank came into range, I popped of a couple of rounds and noted their total lack of effect. High Explosive (HE) rounds did not even scar the armor on the tank and the hardened steel alloy Armor Piercing (AP) rounds just bounced off. This was futile. I could only hope Stathmore's rockets would have better penetration. His rockets used "shaped charges" that are designed to focus the explosion of the warhead into a jet like stream that will blow a hole through the armor. These did not work either, and the tanks just kept lumbering on.

As we turned for a second pass, our "free run" ticket was canceled; some of the ME's had broken away from the dogfights and turned their attention on us. I only discovered this as I watched small holes appear on my right wing. There was no sound, no flashes of light, just the appearance of a series of holes.

Now, I do not know how other people react to being shot at, but I react in the following way: It annoys me. Profoundly.

Being jumped by a fighter from above and behind scares me so badly that fear turns, not so much to anger but into contempt. Pure disgust. Almost like it's a personal violation. I do recognize this is an odd attitude to have I suppose, as I would do what Jerry does if I was in their position. But, still it does not stop the profound annoyance I feel when it occurs, nor the desire for payback.

"Son of a...!" I exclaimed as I witnessed the new design the German pilot was stitching into my aircraft. As I had nowhere to go but up, that's exactly what I did. With a kick of the rudder and punch on the throttle I yawed out of my bank and rolled into a steep climb. The German's next burst missed the wing as I twisted about the aircrafts axis. This maneuver is somewhat dodgy as I risk entering into a stall that I cannot recover form at this altitude. The problem is anything else would have left me fully absorbing the German's next gun burst.

Sure enough, as I reached the apex of my odd rolling, climbing twist, the airspeed bled off too much and the left wing began to fall. Of course the carburetted Merlin engine was not happy with this situation either, the odd angle and sudden negative G force causing the engine to stumble.

I throttled back and pulled the stick hard toward me. The Hurricane's already nose-high attitude was such that traditional stall recovery would probably put me into the ground or slow me so much that the German fighters would pick me off like a fish in a barrel. I hoped I had enough momentum to drop over backward, letting gravity grab the nose and pull me along with it. It would leave me in an inverted position, but there was no way the German on my six would be able to stay with me.

Unfortunately, I lost too much energy in the maneuver. While the recovery had sort of executed as expected, the stall continued too long and the nose fell until I was pointing almost straight down.

Then the craziest thing happened.

As the nose settled and the aircraft gathered speed, the top of a Tiger came directly into my reticle ring and stayed there. It was a perfect shot. Even though I was probably about to die in a horrible crash, I figured "what the hell". I pressed the trigger and held it there, some crazy nonsense about going down in a blaze of glory and all that crossing my mind.

To my amazement the rounds penetrated the top deck of the tank body near the radiators and it began to smoke. I was so surprised by what I was seeing that I completely forgot about my dire predicament for a moment. I watched what seemed to be a series of small flashes and then the tank lit up in a spectacular explosion.