Out of the Blue #1 (2019) story page 1 by Burns

"1: Wooden Wonder" by Garth Ennis. Aftershock. Cover date March 2019.

A big thank you to Caitlan Reynolds and Miki Annamanthadoo for their help with this pickup! It's a stunning exemplar of the comic art of Keith Burns, a British aviation artist and commercial illustrator who has worked with Garth Ennis on war comics such as Battle Action, Johnny Red, and Out of the Blue. He also produced over five years the 288 illustrations in the 2024 book The Second World War: An Illustrated History by James Holland.

Synopsis: The Second World War is almost over, but no one seems to have told the Germans — as Royal Air Force pilot Jamie McKenzie finds out when he’s assigned to deadly shipping strikes along the enemy coast. Flying the Mosquito fighter-bomber against heavily armed targets is dangerous enough at the best of times, but after incurring the wrath of his vengeful commanding officer, Jamie is assigned the most unpopular navigator in the unit — not to mention the least reliable aircraft. Worse still, the commander’s sights are firmly set on Jamie’s beautiful young wife, Beth.

Historical note: The wooden-frame British Mosquito was the most versatile plane of the war. Its extreme-low-attitude and speed capabilities gave it many other roles besides fighter-bomber -- carrier-qualified torpedo bomber, decoy dropping chaff to confuse Luftwaffe radar, high-speed courier, multi-engine trainer and high-speed target tug, night fighter, pathfinder and target-marker for heavy bombers, and photo and weather reconnaissance.

Mosquito raids on Gestapo headquarters in Norway and Denmark are perhaps the most famous missions. The Copenhagen raid requested by the Danish resistance destroyed the headquarters and records, killed German soldiers and Gestapo Danish employees, and freed 18 prisoners.

The civilian cost, however, was high. In a tragic error some planes dropped their bombs on a school when they mistook smoke from a crashed Mosquito for the target on fire, killing 87 schoolchildren and 18 adults. 

(Sources: Aces High Gallery, GCD, keithburns.co.uk, "The Mosquito Fighter-Bomber Did It All in WWII, Quickly Amassing a Combat Record No Other Plane Could Touch" by Stephan Wilkinson, 1/8/2015 on historynet.com, Wikipedia)