We have ways of making you talk presents One Man's Window, an illustrated account of

10 weeks of war, Malta April 13th, June 21st, 1942 by Dennis Barnum, part 2, Middle

distance, chapter 4, Malta bound. It's 5.15am on Monday, April 20th, although I'm

strapped into my Spitfire, but the bag containing my painting things squeezed under my left arm

threatening to jam the throttle lever, I can feel the heaving and shuddering in the ship's

engines racing more vigorously than they have ever raced before. Our carrier must be moving

at full speed so that the Spitfires whose engines I can hear already roaring from the flight

deck above are able to take off. There goes the first, passing slowly across the space

where a panel has been removed in the side of this huge hangar, a tiny aircraft low

over the framed strip of dark water, almost invisible in the grey light of dawn. In the

black tunnel of girders, stretching into the distance beyond my Spitfire's long nose,

pools of electric green light reveal closely packed aircraft, with many pilots still climbing

in. Mechanics stand by their allotted positions, others are ducking hurriedly under metal

wings and tailplanes. Somewhere behind me, an engine chokes them bursts into life, sending

a cloud of blue smoke drifting over my head. More engines start.

Strap tight I can't look round, glancing into the mirror above my windscreen, I observe

that the Spitfire behind me, with the CO inside, is being wheeled backwards towards a great

lift, a pause then with a propeller turning in a transparent arc, the perspective of his

plane changes as it disappears bodily, the lift with it up into the blackness of the girders.

One comes the lift again, and monkey-faced Scotty, one of our Australians, gives me a wide

grin from the cockpit as his plane is dragged into it. Down comes the empty floor again, hungry

for more machines in their pilots, up goes Max. I am signal to start my engine, it bursts

...