Much has been said of these words in our culture. Not much has been said of the planes. It has been a human trait to name their modes of transportation and vessels of war (including horses) for most if not all of recorded time. Very few airplanes make the list. Faith, Hope and Charity are the exception.
At the beginning of WWII, the British station at Malta was only lightly defended. Although a British warship dropped crates for eight fighter biplanes, it took four back aboard to serve on an aircraft carrier elsewhere. Three of those left on Malta were assembled, but they were disassembled to be shipped to areas of more strategic importance. Then the air raids began. Faith, Hope and Charity attacked the bombing runs sent out by the Italians and finally drew blood on 18 June 1940, when they shot down a faster Macchi 200 fighter plane.
Unassisted, the three biplanes defended Malta for 17 days until relief efforts arrived. In order to look like there were more planes defending the island than there actually were, they flew consecutive sorties, disobeyed protocols, and then stole parts from other engines to keep the planes in flight when that disobedience damaged the engines. German bombers finally destroyed the Gladiator biplanes in an air raid February, 1941.
Faith, sometime in 1940
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