Markup View

Author: AgProv

Feb 10th 2013 at 8:51:19 AM

[[AC:Literature]]: 
* In the ''{{Biggles}}'' series, especially those set in the First World War, this trope happens a lot. This mimicked real life: the small, limited-range, biplane and triplane fighters would go up in squadron strength or larger, and this could bring together no less than about twenty planes in a relatively small part of the sky. W.E. Johns fictionalises an incident where there were over a hundred fighters mixing it over France sometime in Summer 1918.

* Johns also uses this trope in Biggles stories set in WW2: ''Biggles Flies East'' culminates in a decisive scene where a formation of over a hundred unescorted Japanese bombers heading for India are jumped by thirty or forty R.A.F. planes.

* Another author using this trope is {{Derek Robinson}}.  In his Battle of Britain novel ''A Piece of Cake'', he ends the novel on a cliffhanger where Squadron Leader Barton's handful of Hurricane fighters are sent into a sky-filling formation of several hundred German bombers and escorting fighters. The book ends with the British pilots resigning themselves to taking a few Jerries with them when they die...