THIS week we have another exciting adventure in those Hell-skies with Alexis Rossoff’s Hell-Cat Squadron! The adventures of the Hell-Cat Brood ran in War Birds, War Stories and Flying Aces. The Seventy-Seventh Squadron had a reputation of being short on technique and long on defying every regulation in the book. The squadron was the cause of many gray hairs on the pates of the star-spangled ones back in G.H.Q. They flew their merry way like nobody’s business, and played hell with any Jerry who tried to dispute their intention of going places. This bunch of cloud-hopping war birds were known from one end of the Western front to the other as the “Hell-cats”—and sometimes the “Unholy Dozen!”

There was one man responsible for “Silent” Peters’ warped outlook on life. One man who turned a brilliant engineer into a man who hates the world, God and life itself. An Ace who was tall, gaunt and taciturn with the eyes of a saint—and the face of a devil with nothing but hate in his heart! And Silent Peters believed he would find this man in the death-torn Hell skies over Germany and settle the score once and for all! From the pages of the August 30th, 1928 issue of War Stories, it’s Alexis Rossoff’s “Silent Peters—Hell-cat!”

He was lean and tall and firm-jawad, this Yank of the Seventy-Seventh Squadron. That was the bunch of cloud-hopping war birds they called the “Hell-cats,” and sometimes the “Unholy Dozen.” But “Silent” Peters was a lone eagle without a buddie in the squadron. He had a reason for his war—a reason that meant more than life.

• Download “Silent Peters—Hell-cat” (August 30, 1928, War Stories)