Hi writer,

It's always going to be an uphill battle with a WWII horror for me, but let’s see what we have...

There is some random asterisk on page 4.

I struggled to follow what was going on and where and to who. This kind of stuff just really doesn’t interest me. Sorry, I'm just not the right audience for this.

All the best.

So the sanitiser definitely feels shoe-horned to suit the challenge as it didn;t really exist in WWII and I doubt it would be ised like this...

But, I'm definitely giving it a pass as I like the rest of the script... always been fascinated by foo figthers and this expanded on them in an interesting direction.

Good job.

"Mystery wrapped in an enigma, son." I don't know why, it just makes me laugh.

Bring on the Heavy Metal!

Not for me, so much. I'm assuming that 'stuff' mentioned early on was old timey hand sanitizer so it meets the criteria. But not much story here. It needs MORE! Some context or explanation. Not much but something.

Some grammatical issues and word choices need attention. Not horrible, just needs more.

Frye's first line is a non-sequitur. Sergeant is also not a "rookie" rank in the military.

The Captain and Co-Pilot are not introduced properly.

The crew would likely use clipped jargon to communicate (takes way too long to say "My guns are jammed!"), but this is fine for making it accessible to a general audience.

"No one wants to go near it" should be more visual. Having Ross and Franks flattened against the walls was a great start.

Not sure how black spheres glow, but I bet it looks interesting.

Seems like Frye knows the sanitizer would repel the spores before any came near him. Just needs a bit of re-arranging to make this make sense.

Frye should know to wait before pulling his chute. This way he can see the explosion, then pull the chute, then see the orbs descend.

My guess is the writer might respond with this:

Like his fellow gunners, the ball turret gunner was an enlisted man with a rank, generally, of Sergeant or higher.
http://www.b17queenofthesky.com/positions/ballgun.php

the dark orbs glowing:

SPIKY STALKS grow out of the man's face, from his bare hands,
even through his clothing. On the ends of each spike forms a
BLACK SPHERE. Some of them glow faintly.

So the spheres are black until they reach maturity and begin to glow. A match stick head is black until it is struck.

intro of Capt and Copilot:

CAPTAIN COOPER and CO-PILOT DAVIS watch the fighter head
straight up into the night sky, disappearing over cloud,
bright orbs dancing around it.

Before that we hear their voices through the intercom, indicated by VO. Not sure how else they should be introduced. Could add the ages, but seems irrelevant to me as we have a general idea of the ages of military air crew.

Frye is already a germaphobe. He douses himself in the sanitizer in case he gets hit by flack. When he sees the strange growth on the dying crewmen, he goes to the only protection he has against something biological. It does not kill these strange spores, but it does seem to repel them.

Frye has never jumped out of a plane in an emergency situation and he's not a paratrooper. Running on adrenaline, he pulls the chute quickly, like 98% of people would, eager to get the chute open.

In WWII, Allied aircrews encountered what they came to call foo fighters: orbs of lights that were drawn to the planes, danced around, did no damage. At first they thought this might be a secret German tech. But to this day it remains unsolved.

This story seems to posit that the orbs were biological. Like the fungus that makes infected ants climb to the highest leaf, lock onto that leaf and die, allowing the spores to spread from height. These spores force the pilot to ascend the craft. Eventually it explodes, dropping the spores. From this height they have a better chance of finding another aircraft. The last thing that Frye sees is the spores dropping toward an Allied bomber formation.

A bit of a hard read for me.  It’s good you’ve placed it during WWII but the flying orbs wasn’t to my liking.  I guess it meets the criteria.

Really good!

The ball turret gun is such a vulnerable position, and you made us feel that. I loved that he was effectively cut off from the rest of the plane by the position of the disabled ball turret. Excellent choice, it really amped things up.

The orbs were menacing enough, but what they did to the crew was downright creepy. Great job.

The "sanitizer" was a good substitute to fit the time period. Maybe it's technically outside the bounds of the challenge (the requirement was specifically hand sanitizer) but I'm fine with what you came up with. What I liked most is it seemed to have nothing to do with the story, it was a character thing that likely helped protect him from physically contracting the spores.

It feels like a proof of concept, like introducing a problem for a larger story. Nothing wrong with that at all, it's just light on story, it's mostly a series of obstacles Frye has to go through and no real ending.

Overall one of my faves. Well done.