Radio communication between pilot Flight Lieutenant Nicholas Cooke and gunner Acting Corporal Albert Lippett was drowned out by the pounding of enemy fire, their own fire, and screaming wind, as they chased down the German Heinkel.
Yet slicing through clouds at 4,000ft with a team of fellow fighters, Cooke intuitively knew when to hold steady as Lippett, behind him in the machine gun turret, aimed and fired.
The other gunners did the same. In those fleeting seconds amid the cloying mist over Dunkirk, Cooke could see the whites of the Germans’ eyes.
And he could clearly see their fear, too. “I could see the pilot and navigator duck at each burst,” he later wrote in his combat report. “Then the enemy aircraft engines went on fire and stalled.
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