THIS week we have a story by Stanely Wagenen. Howard Stanley VanWagenen was an Airman, an Author, and well-known Photographer at the time of his death at 44. He was a former member of the Dane county board and a prominent Madison photographer for the last 12 years of his life. Along the line he found time to learn to pilot his own plane, receiving a transport pilot’s license from the federal bureau of aeronautics in May 1930. Wagenen served as aviation editor for The State Journal; was the author of a 24-volume set of aviation text books; and served as director of ground schools for the Royal Flying academy as well as participating in many air stunt shows, winning numerous prizes in competition. All this and he wrote for the pulps as well!

Howard Morry, a high strung product of post war flying, had become fed up on the tame round of air mail jumps. He had not said so, but while loafing about waiting for his dispatches, he would fondly tinker with his silver winged monoplane. It was of no particular make, but his own assembly of everything good. With Morry at the controls it could outrun and outfly any one hundred and fifty horse powered crate in government service. Morry would put it to the test when he went undercover with some smugglers working the southern border.

From the November 1929 Flying Aces, it’s Stanley Wagenen’s “The Ace of Diamonds!”

“Major Chatterton, commander of the Border Patrol, dares you to try and cross the American boundary at noon tomorrow.” Thus ran the message, and thus began the gamest scrap the air has known!

• Download “The Ace of Diamonds” (November 1929, Flying Aces)

From the June 13th, 1930 issue of The Wisconsin State Journal, meet the man, the myth, H Stanley Van Wagenen: