THIS November we’re celebrating William E. Barrett’s Birthday with four of his pulp stories—one each Friday.

Before he became renown for such classics as The Left Hand of God and Lilies of The Field, Barrett honed his craft across the pages of the pulp magazines—and nowhere more so than in War Birds and it’s companion magazine War Aces where he contributed smashing novels and novelettes, True tales of the Aces of the Great War, encyclopedic articles on the great war planes as well as other factual features. Here at Age of Aces Books he’s best known for his nine Iron Ace stories which ran in Sky Birds in the mid ’30s!

This week we have a tale that’s a bit different—well, it’s written in a different fashion, as if a flight instructor is telling us a tale. It’s a tale of two very different men who both went for flying instruction the same week. One was Wally Minter, a millionaire, the other, Sam Hazard, a hobo—both ends of the old social ladder. But it didn’t matter where they came from or how much money they had—when it came to flying it was all a matter of “Air Feel” and who had it.

It takes more than dude clothes and a shiny helmet to make a pilot—but some people don’t know it.

From the December 1929 Air Trails, it’s William E. Barrett’s “Air Feel!”

• Download “Air Feel” (December 1929, Air Trails)