Summer, 1936. 14 year old Alex Dixon's life is one of idyllic adventure. His father owns a small aviation consultancy and the seasons air race events are getting under way. In a few years Alex hopes to be part of it all, flying his own machine agai...
As it happened, Alex was having similar thoughts himself. The Tiger Moth had closed to within a few hundred yards of his father's Gipsy. The kidnapper had either not seen him, or more likely had chosen to ignore the pursuing plane. Now Alex thought about it, he wasn't exactly sure what he was going to do now that he had caught up. There was no way of forcing a landing; any attempt to do that would probably damage both planes and they might both end up tumbling into the sea. He could follow as long as he could, but at some point he would either have to turn around or risk trying to make France, assuming the Tiger Moth had enough fuel. Alex looked at the gauge again and was dismayed to notice that it was already approaching a quarter full. How could it have gone down so quickly? He realised that he had been using full throttle the whole time to catch up with the Gipsy Moth, and that was sure to result in an awful lot of fuel being used. He eased the throttle back so that he now kept pace a hundred yards behind.
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Just then, the kidnapper turned his head and stared at Alex, as if appraising him in some way; perhaps trying to determine whether or not he would follow him into the turmoil ahead. The man raised his arm from the cockpit and for a moment Alex thought he was waving at him, until the flash from a handgun revealed his true intent. Alex instinctively ducked, but both aircraft were by now bouncing wildly up and down in the turbulent air and he reckoned it unlikely that he would be hit.
Then, as if by magic, the Gipsy Moth disappeared from view. Two seconds later Alex understood why. His aircraft was simultaneously hit by a massive downdraft that made his stomach feel as if it was trying to force its way up through his head, and at the same time hailstones as large as marbles began hammering off the airframe. The noise of the engine and propeller were drowned out in the tumult, and Alex lost all reference to the ground as the world turned grey. The turbulence was so severe that he couldn't focus his eyes on the instruments. Time after time the Tiger Moth was bounced in different directions while rain and hail stung his face and found its way down inside the cockpit, soaking his shirt and chilling him to the bone. All Alex could hope for was that he was keeping the aircraft as level as possible, and that he wasn't losing altitude.
It got darker and darker as he flew further into the storm. Lightning was all around him now, even illuminating the cloud below, and every flash sent thrills of fear down Alex's spine lest it should hit the plane. The sound of thunder added to the deafening noise of wind and hail and the combination of searing flashes of light, noise and turbulent motion began to take its toll. He could no longer be sure which way up the airplane was, or in which direction he was flying, and to make matters worse, he began to feel queasy.
He looked around to see if there was any sign of the Gipsy Moth and his fear ramped even higher. He could see waves; dark grey, heaving masses of water with white topped crests that were torn off by gusts of wind and all lit up in staccato motion by the lightning.
It was too surreal to take in - the waves were above him! Alex thought for a moment that he was imagining things; that it must be some freak formation of cloud within the thunderstorm itself, before reality hit home and he realised the Tiger Moth was tumbling, out of control and upside down. Paralysed with terror, he watched as the sky that was really the sea tilt in front of him as the plane stalled, the heavy engine pulling the nose down further and further until the Tiger Moth was pointing directly downwards, spinning wildly. Alex stared wide-eyed at the waves filling his view with alarming speed as the plane dived towards the water, appearing to zoom towards him with astonishing speed. Coming out of his paralysis, he pressed hard on the rudder to halt the spin, then pulled back on the control stick as much as he dared, praying that the airframe would take the stress he was asking of it. He was being pressed down into the seat and his vision became dark at the edges. "Come on! Come on!" he yelled, as the Tiger Moth struggled to bring its nose up away from the angry water. It bucked and lurched violently in the turbulence, then levelled out sickeningly close to the sea. For a second, Alex thought all was lost when the crest of a large wave passed in front of the nose ... but the Tiger Moth caught an updraft at the face of the wave and just missed it, before dropping into the trough behind. In the dead air between wave crests, the Tiger Moth wallowed sluggishly. Alex rammed the throttle fully open and the engine roared and juddered. The next wave reared up in front, it's top an angry mass of foam, and he pulled back on the controls once more, willing the Tiger Moth up and over.
He almost made it. With a huge shock, the undercarriage slammed into the froth of the wave's crest and was torn off. For a second the airplane seemed to stop dead, but then the Tiger Moth shook itself free of the spray and climbed slowly, slowly upwards. Alex continued climbing until he was a hundred feet or so above the heaving sea, then levelled off, not wanting to enter the blindness of the storm clouds again. His terror had reached a peak at the moment the Tiger Moth had clipped the wave, but as soon as it was apparent the plane still flew and that he had got safely clear of the sea, Alex let out a yell of triumph. His terror subsided a little, but he was not out of trouble yet, and the plane was still bucking around violently.
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It seemed to be a little brighter to his right, so Alex turned that way in the hope of finding relief from the incessant stinging hail and buffeting winds. He was rewarded a few seconds later by sunlight and a clear horizon as he emerged from the storm. His breath came in great gasps as a feeling of profound relief coursed through his body, taking his nausea down a notch. He looked about him, but he couldn't see his father's Gipsy Moth anywhere.
Pushing his worry for his father to the back of his mind for the time being, Alex concentrated on his own safety, which meant getting safely over land and then crash-landing the Tiger Moth somewhere. He surveyed the coastline ahead and tried to work out where in France he was headed, but was hit with a sense that everything was wrong somehow. He had viewed the French coast several times on flights with his father, as it was quite obvious from high up on a clear day, but this just didn't look right. Then it dawned on him; it wasn't the French coast at all. It was England, and he must have turned completely around in the blindness of the storm.
Disappointment now adding to his already frayed emotions, Alex reluctantly pointed the Tiger Moth towards Brighton, which he recognised in the distance, and tried to ignore the returning nausea that was threatening to overcome him.
It was a few minutes before he noticed a pair of RAF Hawker Fury fighter planes that had stationed themselves on either side of the Tiger Moth, their polished silver airframes gleaming brightly against the dark cloud of the thunderstorm behind. They ranged up close either side and one of the pilots pointed emphatically at Alex's plane, then his own, before indicating ahead. The message was clear: 'Come with us'. It was then that Alex realised he was in serious trouble.
*
A short while later, Alex was seated in the mess hall at RAF Tangmere, home of 43 Squadron, from where Wing Commander Farrington had ordered a patrol to chase after Alex and his father's Gipsy Moth, with orders to escort them back to the RAF base. The pilots of the Furies had not seen either de Havilland enter the storm and were not willing to enter it themselves, so had patrolled back and forth until the battered bright blue Tiger Moth had suddenly appeared, skimming the wave tops a little to the east of their position.
The Furies had escorted Alex back to Tangmere, where the lack of undercarriage caused Alex a few moments of renewed terror as he came in to land. Remembering something his father once told him about how one might handle a similar situation, Alex had let the Tiger Moth settle down onto the grass tailwheel first, holding the wings as level as possible so as to reduce the chance of a ground loop should one come down before the other, before closing the throttle and allowing the plane to sink down onto its belly. Luckily, the Tiger Moth slide neatly along the grass, the heavy engine gouging a furrow through the well-manicured turf.
Alex was so cold and wet he could hardly move, and needed help from an astonished ground crew to get out of the wrecked Tiger Moth. After the noise of the raging storm and roaring engine, the silence was profound. Alex could clearly hear the drip, drip, drip of leaking fuel and the ticking of cooling exhaust pipes. Once out of the cockpit, he stood by the wrecked plane, somewhat unsteadily, muttered his thanks to the growing ring of openly curious onlookers, then threw up.
