WHEN Flying, the new weekly paper of all things aviation, started up in England in 1938, amongst the articles and stories and photo features was an illustrative feature called “Heroes of the Air.” It was a full page illustration by S. Drigin of the events surrounding how the pictured Ace got their Victoria Cross along with a brief explanatory note.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 25 June 1938 issue of Flying:

MAJOR W.G. BARKER WINNING THE V.C. OVER THE GERMAN LINES, OCT. 27, 1918

Major W.G. Barker, V.C., D.S.O., M.C., a Canadian officer, was awarded the V.C. for what must have been one of the most courageous air battles of the war. He should have gone home on leave on October 26, 1918, but he stayed for one more day’s flying and took off for England on the 27th. High above the German lines he spotted an enemy two-seater, the pilot apparently thinking himself quite safe. Barker, however, was flying a Sopwith Snipe, one of the most efficient machines in France. Within a few moments he had climbed up to his adversary and had sent him spinning down to earth. A Fokker Triplane, having seen this, came to avenge his countrymen, and close behind him came over fifty more German machines. With bullets converging on him from all sides, Barker fought in a fury. Several times he was hit, but still he fought on. In all, he sent four of his attackers to the ground before he himself was brought down, unconscious, just behind the British lines. He had 52 victories to his credit at the time. In hospital he mended slowly and at last he was able to fly again, only to lose his life in 1930, when a new machine he was testing crashed, killing him instantly.

THIS week we have a story from the pen of Donald E. Keyhoe—his first in the pages of Flying Aces magazine, which ran a story by Keyhoe in most of their issue from January 1930 through September 1942, featuring characters like Richard Knight, Eric Trent or Captain Philip Strange! Before Keyhoe started up the series characters, he wrote other stories of then present day aviation situations. “Air Crimes, Limited” outlines how a massive criminal ring is using airplanes on a big scale for various crooked schemes. Captain Jack Collins of the Air Corp is tasked with infiltrating this organization and getting information that can be used to bring the organization down.

From the pages of the January 1930 issue of Flying Aces it’s Donald E. Keyhoe’s “Air Crimes, Limited!”

A mysterious message from the Chief of the Flying Corps—an organization of master air criminals—red-hot gangster guns—furious breathtaking cloud battles—all woven into a smashing sky yarn by a pilot writer whose articles on aviation are famous!

• Download “Air Crimes, Limited” (January 1930, Flying Aces)

THIS week we have a story from the pen of a prolific pulp author O.B. Myers! Myers was a pilot himself, flying with the 147th Aero Squadron and carrying two credited victories and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

This time, Mr. Myers gives us a tale of the supposed chivalry among enemy pilots in “Square—Hell!” from the pages of the June 1929 number of War Novels!

“Give them both guns in the guts”—that was the flight commander’s treatment for disabled enemy flyers. But air warfare to Larry Fowler was still a game, to be played according to certain rules of sportsmanship.

• Download “Square—Hell!” (June 1929, War Novels)

“HAW-W-W-W-W!” That sound can only mean one thing—that Bachelor of Artifice, Knight of Calamity and an alumnus of Doctor Merlin’s Camelot College for Conjurors is back to vex not only the Germans, but the Americans—the Ninth Pursuit Squadron in particular—as well. Yes it’s the marvel from Boonetown, Iowa himself—Lieutenant Phineas Pinkham!

Phineas starts a row with the neighboring French Nieuport squadron, but when the Old Man grounds the Boonetown buffoon indefinitely, Phineas Pinkham tries to set things right “For Dear Old G.H.Q.!” From the pages of the September 1931 Flying Aces.

From the mess hall came the sounds of contented sky birds. In the trees near the drome song birds trilled their gentle arias. And over the headquarters phone no curses had come from G.H.Q. for three days. Even Major Garrity, C.O., was fooled—he forgot that Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham was still a member of the Ninth Pursuit Squadron!

• Download “For Dear Old G.H.Q.!” (September 1931, Flying Aces)

THIS week we have a story from the prolific pen of Eustace L. Adams. Born in 1891, Adams was an editor and author who served in the American Ambulance Service and the US Naval Service during The Great War. His aviation themed stories started appearing in 1928 in the various war and aviation pulps—Air Trails, Flying Aces, War Stories, Wings, War Birds, Sky Birds, Under Fire, Air Stories and Argosy. He is probably best remembered for the dozen or so airplane boys adventure books he wrote for the Andy Lane series.

Ensigns Peter B. Hemmingway and Jack Lewis had been attached to the little unit of American naval aviators near Havre for a month now, and they craved action. So far as they had been concerned, the war had not been much more thrilling than their training course, back in the States. All their thrills had come secondhand. Some of the other fliers had seen action and the station had several scalps to its credit, but the two boys had been out of luck, for as faithful as they had been on their patrols they had not had a single chance to pull their release ring and drop the ugly bomb which hung suspended from the fuselage between the twin pontoons. Perhaps today their luck would turn and their chance would come—

From the November 1928 number of Under Fire, it’s Eustace L. Adams’ “Give Her The Gun!”

A hydroplane stranded—an approaching submarine—a rescuing destroyer—and dead men tell no tales.

• Download “Give Her The Gun” (November 1928, Under Fire)

WHEN Flying, the new weekly paper of all things aviation, started up in England in 1938, amongst the articles and stories and photo features was an illustrative feature called “Heroes of the Air.” It was a full page illustration by S. Drigin of the events surrounding how the pictured Ace got their Victoria Cross along with a brief explanatory note.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 18 June 1938 issue of Flying:

THE END OF MAJOR E. MANNOCK, V.C.,OVER THE GERMAN LINES, JULY 26, 1918

“THIS highly distinguished officer, during the whole of his career in the Royal Air Force, was an outstanding example of fearless courage, remarkable skill, devotion to duty and self-sacrifice, which has never been surpassed.” Such were the words employed in the notification of the award of the V.C. to Major E. Mannock, which was made in the London Gazette on July 18, 1919. In view of this officer’s outstanding career it is hard to understand how it was that the award should have come very nearly a year after he was killed in action. His death, depicted here, occurred on July 26, 1918, over the German lines.

Early that morning he set out with Lieut. Inglis on a patrol over enemy territory. They soon found a two-seater, which they shot down and then, flying low, they turned for home. No one knows quite what happened next. What is fairly certain is that Mannock’s machine was struck by a bullet from the ground. Lieut. Inglis, who was flying behind, saw a flame appear in the side of Mannock’s machine. Following this, the machine went into a slow turn and crashed in flames. Such was the end of this gallant officer who, with 73 victories to his credit, was the last member of the R.A.F. to be awarded the V.C.

THIS week we have a story from Raoul Whitfield. Whitfield was a prolific pulp writer primarily known for his hardboiled crime fiction published in the pages of Black Mask, but he was equally adept at lighter fair that might run in the pages of Breezy Stories. We’ve featured a number of his Buck Kent stories that ran in Air Trails, but this time we have a WWI tale!

What are the chances of two men from the same squadron, assigned to the same D.H. for reconnaissance photos, having the same picture of a girl from back home on their coop walls? From the June 1929 number of Over The Top, it’s Raoul Whitfield’s “The Sky Joker!”

Photographs, military and otherwise, bring trouble to a certain American flying squadron in France.

• Download “Sky Pictures” (June 1929, Over The Top)

TODAY we have a story from the prolific pen of Robert Sidney Bowen. Bowen was a war pilot of the Royal Air Force, as well as the editor of one of the foremost technical journals of aviation in addition to penning hundreds of action-packed stories for the pulps.

Chuck Kirkwood is in a slump when he is sent along with several other members of his squadron to support a fake offensive that becomes all too real. Thankfully he gets his mojo back at just the right moment.

They’re re-born—fighting stark berserk in shrapnel-shredded skies for a crazy cause!

• Download “Aces Aren’t Born” (July 1938, Sky Devils)

THIS week we have a story from the pen of the Navy’s own Allan R. Bosworth. Bosworth wrote a couple dozen stories with Humpy & Tex over the course of ten years from 1930 through 1939, mostly in the pages of War Aces and War Birds. The stories are centered around the naval air base at Ile Tudy, France. “Humpy” Campbell, a short thickset boatswain’s mate, first class who was prone to be spitting great sopping globs of tabacco juice, was a veteran seaplane pilot who would soon rate two hashmarks—his observer, Tex Malone, boatswain’s mate, second class, was a D.O.W. man fresh from the Texas Panhandle. Everybody marveled at the fact that the latter had made one of the navy’s most difficult ratings almost overnight—but the answer lay in his ability with the omnipresent rope he constantly carried.

Caught in a sudden squall, Humpy & Tex find themselves down in the ocean and starting to sink! Their rescue puts them smack in the middle of a German plot to blow up the port at St. Nazaire. They may be down, but they’re not “Washed Out!” By the Navy’s own Allan R. Bosworth from the pages of the December 1930 War Aces.

One of them chewed tobacco and the other sang, but it wasn’t until they were pulled over the side of that mystery ship that Humpy and Tex sang “Hallelujah, I’m a bum.”

• Download “Washed Out” (December 1930, War Aces)

THIS week we have another story from one of the new flight of authors on the site this year—Andrew A. Caffrey. Caffrey, who was in the American Air Service in France during The Great War and worked for the air mail service upon his return, was a prolific author of aviation and adventure stories for both the pulps and slicks from the 1920’s through 1950. For the second issue of Sky Birds, Caffrey tells the story of Lieutenant Mike Harris—a.k.a. “Coupe Mike” due to his proclivity to overuse the coupe button during his training—fresh up from Issoudon after extensive training.

Caffrey himself gives a vague bit of the background for the tale while praising Hersey on his great line of aviation titles in a letter in the Ailerons column from the same issue:

From the February 1929 issue of Sky Birds:

“Coupe Mike,” they called him. He was named a Lieutenant by the War Department, and Michael by an adoring mother. However, Fate dubbed him a Black Cat for luck until Fate changed his mind and so furnished the material for a bang-up air novelette.

• Download “Knights of the Nieuport” (February 1929, Sky Birds)

As a bonus, here’s a brief autobiography of sorts by Andrew that ran in the April 1928 New McClures Magazine:

MY LONG-LOAFING experience was started back in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on the coldest March the eleventh that 1891 knew. That makes me twenty-one by actual count.

Early in May, 1917, I talked the War over with a recruiting sergeant in San Francisco and he promised that it would last long enough. Well, before I was in that uniform for one full lay I knew that the War had lasted too long. And it was more than three years before I gazed at a bird in a mirror of a New York automat and wondered why he looked back at me, and like me. It was so long since I had seen me in civvies that I was startled, as someone has said, to stillness. Yet, for the first time in a long while i liked me.

After the War I was with air mail in San Francisco. Later I went as a civilian employee to McCook Field, Dayton. There I worked with the cross-country section and flew much over the East. When Clover Field, Santa Monica, came into existence I came here as Chief Mechanic. Out of Clover Field I flew on much long-distance work; coast to coast and north and south. We were trying to prove that aviation had arrived. It hadn’t and it hasn’t: and I, for one, know that there’ll be lots of good flying ten years from now. And wanting to be in on some of the good flying, I gave the thing up till such time as some great skill unfolds the future of air. Over periods of years at a time we followers of air lose track of old pals. But sooner or later we always find them, and in the same place—in the crashed and killed news. As long as that is true flying has not arrived. The game today is just as dangerous as it was when the Wrights hopped off at kitty Hawk. That’s why the one living Wright, Curtiss, Martin and the old men of the air stay on the ground. They know, and better than anybody else realize, that the patron saint of aviation is the Fool Killer.

Fact is, I am one of an ex-army of broken men. And I tell you what: it’s been a hard quiet war for a lot of us boys ever since a certain long lank kid clapped a cool blue eye to a periscope and found Paris. . . Find Paris! Say, isn’t it just possible that a lot of us should get off the controls and let somebody fly who can fly? . . . But it’s tough to be running around with clipped wings and have no willing ears to tell it to. Lindy has done a lot for aviation, but look what he’s done to the rest of us!

Well, I’m sure sorry for the rest of the boys, but just so long as McClure’s will let me fly now and then I’ll try to keep a stiff upper lip and the rest of the fixings.

* The above picture of Andrew A. Caffrey is cropped from a picture that accompanied Caffrey’s article “West is East (Or Delivering the General’s Nickel-Plated Dog Kennel)” that appeared in the pages of the December 1923 issue of U.S. Air Service.

WHEN Flying, the new weekly paper of all things aviation, started up in England in 1938, amongst the articles and stories and photo features was an illustrative feature called “Heroes of the Air.” It was a full page illustration by S. Drigin of the events surrounding how the pictured Ace got their Victoria Cross along with a brief explanatory note.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 11 June 1938 issue of Flying:

LIEUT. R.A.J. WARNEFORD DESTROYING THE L.Z.37 OVER THE ENEMY LINES, JUNE 7, 1915

TO SUB-LIEUTENANT Reginald Alexander John Warneford, V.C., belongs the honour of being the first British officer to bring down a Zeppelin. Towards the end of 1915 Britain decided to take decisive action against the activities of the Zeppelins, which were becoming a serious menace. Flying a Morane “Parasol,” Warneford set out from Furnes at one o’clock in the morning, on June 7th, 1915. His instructions were to bomb enemy airship hangars. Within five minutes he sighted the L.Z.37 and set off after it. He carried six bombs, but in order to use them he had to get above his quarry. At first he was too close and five bombs passed right through the airship before exploding. After dimbing a little he dropped his last bomb. It exploded in the nose of the Zeppelin with such force that the “Parasol” was thrown upside down, several hundred feet into the air. Having regained control Warneford found that his engine had stopped. He was forced to land, and repairing a broken petrol pipe as quickly as possible (he was 30 miles inside enemy territory) he took off again for his base. Like many others he did not long survive his triumph; he was killed in a crash near Paris only ten days later.

THIS week we have a story from the pen of a prolific pulp author O.B. Myers! Myers was a pilot himself, flying with the 147th Aero Squadron and carrying two credited victories and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

This time, Mr. Myers gives us “The Last of Spad 16″ from the pages of the January 1932 number of Flying Aces!

Every day that lone Yank with the number 16 on his Spad swooped down out of the clouds and attacked single-handed a drome twenty-five miles behind the German lines—a daredevil stunt only one of America’s greatest aces would try. You couldn’t blame Oberleutnant Schmidt of the proud Schmidts of Brandenburg for plotting to see!

• Download “The Last of Spad 16″ (January 1932, Flying Aces)

“HAW-W-W-W-W!” That sound can only mean one thing—that Bachelor of Artifice, Knight of Calamity and an alumnus of Doctor Merlin’s Camelot College for Conjurors is back to vex not only the Germans, but the Americans—the Ninth Pursuit Squadron in particular—as well. Yes it’s the marvel from Boonetown, Iowa himself—Lieutenant Phineas Pinkham!

Phineas is jumped by a couple Boche Fokkers and sent crashing into a tree all while a pair of British Bristols idly fly by watching, but not helping in the least. When Phineas tries to get to the bottom of the British flyers’ lack of assistance it could all blow up into a Royal Scandal! From the August 1931 Flying Aces, it’s Phineas Pinkham in Joe Archibald’s “Tell It to the King!”

It was all the fault of the Limeys that his Spad was smeared against the side of a tree and he himself looked like the target in a knife-throwing contest. And if you think he let the matter rest right there—well, you don’t know Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham!

• Download “Tell It to the King!” (August 1931, Flying Aces)

WHEN Flying, the new weekly paper of all things aviation, started up in England in 1938, amongst the articles and stories and photo features was an illustrative feature called “Heroes of the Air.” It was a full page illustration by S. Drigin of the events surrounding how the pictured Ace got their Victoria Cross along with a brief explanatory note.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 4 June 1938 issue of Flying:

LIEUT. W.B. RHODES-MOORHOUSE WINNING THE V.C. AT COURTRAI, APRIL 26, 1915

ON APRIL 26, 1915, No. 2 Squadron received a message that the railway junction at Courtrai was to be bombed to prevent enemy reinforcements from reaching the front. Lieutenant Rhodes-Moorhouse left the aerodrome at Merville in company with three other machines. Each machine carried a one-hundred-pound bomb, the largest in use at that time. When Rhodes-Moorhouse arrived at the railway junction he descended to a height of only three hundred feet. This enabied him to score a direct hit, but it also exposed him to concentrated fire from all the troops who were waiting at the station and from the anti-aircraft batteries defending it. At such close range the odds were all against him. One bullet broke his thigh, another shattered his hand, and a third reached his stomach. Despite the fact that he was dying and in terrible agony he realised the importance of returning to headquarters to make his report. Unhappily he died of his wounds within twenty-four hours. He was awarded the V.C. on May 22, 1915.

THIS week we have another exciting air adventure with Rusty Wade from the pen of Frank Richardson Pierce. Pierce is probably best remembered for his prolific career in the Western Pulps. Writing under his own name as well as two pen names—Erle Stanly Pierce and Seth Ranger. Pierce’s career spanned fifty years and produced over 1,500 short stories, with over a thousand of these appearing in the pages of Argosy and the Saturday Evening Post.

Each year Rusty Wade promised himself a real, old-fashioned Christmas, and each year Fate decreed that he be riding high in the air, eating cold sandwiches instead of thrusting his long legs under a table groaning with turkey and the other good things that went with a Christmas dinner. But this year he was determined to have just that with Mary Heath—the prettiest teacher in the whole Yukon country. Until that faked distress call came in from the ice bound Ellen Dow. From the pages of the January 1930 Air Trails, it’s Christmas in July with Rusty Wade in Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Frozen Wings!”

“Hawk” Breed was out to beat him; but “Rusty” Wade made a dare-devil’s landing and pledged himself to play a desperate game!

• Download “Frozen Wings” (January 1930, Air Trails)