"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." 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).