Caldwell scored another striking victory in February 1942, while leading a formation of 11 Kittyhawks from 112 Sqn and 3 Sqn. Over Gazala, he sighted a "schwarm" of Bf 109Fs flying some 2,000 ft higher. Caldwell immediately nosed into a shallow dive, applied maximum power and boost, then pulled his Kittyhawk up into a vertical climb. With his P-40 "hanging from its propeller," he fired a burst at a Bf 109 flown by "Leutnant" Hans-Arnold Stahlschmidt of I./JG 27, who was lagging behind the others. Stahlschmidt's fighter "shuddered like a carpet being whacked with a beater" before spinning out of control. Although the Kittyhawk pilots thought that the Bf 109 had crashed inside Allied lines, Stahlschmidt was able to crash-land in friendly territory.