its massive engines. The vast aircraft rolled over and plunged earthward, blazing like a comet, and the infuriated Nazi pilots swarmed to attack the lone American plane as it dove away. But from the end of the line came the crackle of another plane's guns. One German plane staggered, then exploded. A second rolled over and went down. Hildur was fighting like a lioness for her man.
But the crack pilots of the Luftwaffe instantly realized what was happening. Several of them arched around in different directions, skilfully hemming Hildur in. As she twisted and turned, vainly trying to bring her guns to bear on her gyrating opponents, her plane was shredded in a deadly crossfire.
Still diving away and high speed - his specially modified plane slowly pulling ahead of his pursuers - ”young Jerry glanced back to see the great transport falling in a stream of fire, and a lone German fighter dropping from the sky like a broken bird.
He called Hildur's name over his radio, but there was no answer.
Heartbroken, he flew back to England to deliver his priceless intelligence. And there, says my informant, the story ends - officially, at least. But confidentially, the secret of the Kugelblitz was not lost in the flaming crater dug into the fields of France by the falling transport. Dr. Taschenbrot, jealously protective of his invention, was dozing in the pilot's seat of one of his strange aircraft - the original model, not one of the armed ones - that were strapped within the cavernous cargo bay of the transport.
Jolted awake by the huge airplane's death plunge, he simply started the atomic engine of his craft, and the glowing shield protected him from the flames and wild gyrations of the dive.
Waiting until the fuselage broke in midair, he flew out of the wreck just before it smashed into the earth, guided his craft into a thicket of trees along a stream, and climbed shakily out to savor his escape. He had, he thought, had quite enough of war. He was trying to plan how he might hide from the wrath of a disappointed Fuehrer until the Allies could invade and accept his surrender, when he was nonplussed to see a beautiful young woman wearing only rags approach him with a pistol, and tell him to surrender or die.
With the young lady's help, he sealed the hull of the Kugelblitz and they sank it in the stream, under a covering of cobblestones, to await the invasion.
And there, my informant says, is the extent of his knowledge - with the additional note that Captain Jerry Selznik, sworn to secrecy and rotated back Stateside, brought a war bride back to America, a beautiful young Belgian named Hilda.
The unsung American hero and his wife live quietly in a Chicago suburb today, under the protective folds of the Stars and Stripes - and the glowing lights in the sky that the public calls Flying Saucers.
(Caption) Jerry Selznik, unsung American hero, as a captain in the Army Air Force.
(Caption) Artist's impression of the deadly dogfight in which Captain Selznik shot down the huge German transport carrying the Nazi's ultimate secret weapon.
(Caption) Hildur von Glenhauser, beautiful German spy, now content to be Mrs. Hilda Selznik, ordinary American housewife.