"It's Never in the Papers."

Bates's second "Flying Officer X" story depicts the human side of air force operations, one not covered in newspaper accounts, in this case that of a young pilot, "cherubic, grinning, bouncing, handsome, too irresponsible and altogether too like a schoolboy to be engaged in the serious business of flying an expensive bomber."

After a particularly dangerous engagement, and an equally frivolous acrobatic celebration the following evening, the narrator says "I understood why he flew, and why he flew as he did, and I understood the man he was."

Published in:

• The News Chronicle (February 9, 1942)
• Jerusalem Radio Forum (September 4, 1942)
• The Greatest People in the World and Other Stories (1942)
• There's Something in the Air (1943)
• Something in the Air (1944)
• The Stories of Flying Officer 'X' (1952)
• The Complete Stories of Flying Officer 'X' (Bloomsbury ebook, 2018)