Easy Grace

To his right he could see one of the Mig 21s;  circling above him, waiting for him to be far enough away from the other for a missile shot.  The Russian’s wingman was still using its re-heated engine to maintain the turn.  For what seemed like several minutes Tom and the Russian continued to circle.  On the edge of losing his vision and feeling the strain of moving parts of his body that were more than six times their normal weight, Tom attempted to overcome his terror and think rationally. The circling Mig was not able to out-turn him, but the higher one would inevitably loose a missile at him if he tried to break away.  Feeling the control column begin to judder as he attempted to steepen the turn even further, Tom realised that his aircraft had now lost so much speed in circling that the wing was about to stall.

‘Well, this is It,’ he thought, allowing a brief picture of Helen Bain to form in his mind,’ goodbye Helen.’

Closing the throttle rapidly and deploying his airbrake, Tom allowed his remaining speed to decay.  As the nose of the Hunter lurched into a stall, He kicked on full left rudder and jerked the control column to the right.  Almost instantly the aircraft flipped over onto its back and began to plummet out of the sky in a violent spin.