Starting with the February 1937 issue of Flying Aces, Alden McWilliams began his illustrated tribute to the pioneer aviators of that era. He called it “They Had What it Takes”. It appeared in each issue of Flying Aces until June 1940. Each week we will make a new installment available for download.

Part 1 features the greatest legend of them all, Charles Lindbergh.

• Download “They Had What It Takes Part 1″ (February 1937, Flying Aces)

That great German ace, the Mad Butcher from Hamburg, wants some Limburger and can’t find it. Phineas, the mad Pinkham from Boonetown, Iowa, has some Limburger and doesn’t know it. Oh, yes. Fate brings them together. The big cheese!

• Download “Smell-Shocked” (January 1934, Flying Aces)

Tug Hardwick’s sleek Northrop was beautiful as it hurtled over the shimmering Sulu Sea—beautiful, that is, until its vitals were poisoned with whistling lead! Anyhow, this hot interview was something the Flying-Reporter  hadn’t expected. Why, before his story was written it was getting punctuated—with bullets! But bullets or no. Tug was bent on tracking down his man. And he knew he was on the right track when a booming laugh brought forth—a little ship that wasn’t there!

• Download “Raider Wings” (February 1940, Flying Aces)

Those four victories to his credit meant nothing to Bob Sexton—now. At last he had gotten Gerhardt, the invincible German ace—had sent his famous Red-Wing plane crashing down to a fiery doom. Yet that fifth victory—the descendu that made him an ace—was the one he would never be able to claim.

• Download “The Suicide Strafe” (January 1935, Sky Birds)

When they asked for volunteers to fly that spy mission, Abe answered because he couldn’t sit down. It took another spy to convince him that medals were not always granted for bravery.

• Download “The Spy in the Ointment” (November 1933, War Birds)

When the Blue Flare tore through the skies, no pilot ever failed to answer that signal for help. But sometimes someone answers it who shouldn’t. Then a baited trap is the only answer.

• Download “One Blue Flare” (November 1933, War Birds)

Phineas Pinkham had given Major Rufus Garrity two cigars in a week—and they’d both been good! What was behind this sudden bout of good behavior? Something was very wrong at the drome of the Ninth Pursuit.

• Download “The Frying Suit” (December 1933, Flying Aces)

A Yank pilot said too much at a Paris estaminet, a British airman said too little on the way to the Front. And a battle that began at twelve thousand feet hurtled to a hangar door. Will this be the end of The Casket Crew?

• Download “The Flying Fortress” (June 1932, Aces)

Tony Blaine knew it was a bad idea to be in that Manilla bar in the first place—after all his first take-off as chief pilot of the Pacific Cruiser was less than four hours away. And when that girl approached him, deep down in his gut, he knew trouble was also going to be aboard this flight

• Download “Transpacific Plunder” (September 12 1936, Argosy)

To the brass hats Josephine was just a bomber in an American squadron cooperating with the R.A.F. in the Burma campaign. But to her crew she was a gallant old girl of the air who had been through many hazardous flying hours with her four boyfriends.

• Download “Medals for Josephine” (Summer 1943, Army-Navy Flying Stories)

Save for some strange, organ-like trills that had sounded from his radio,  Dick Knight’s flight had been uneventful. But Knight did not know that those weird tones he had heard were the ominous notes of an overture to a drama of death. Nor did he know that just five minutes before, a gaunt Prussian, with feverish eyes on a black clock, had whispered: “Five more minutes! Only five more minutes to wait after all these years!”

• Download “Hell’s Hangar” (July 1938, Flying Aces)

On May 6, 1937, the airship Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed while attempting to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. But one year earlier the Hindenburg was preparing to make its first voyage to North America, and “Flying Aces” was heralding its arrival with an article and cover painting in the June 1936 issue by C. B. Mayshark (which would have been on the stands in May).

• Download “The New Zeppelin” by C. B. Mayshark

One of our favorite writers here at Age of Aces is Donald E. Keyhoe, but he is as well known for his UFO research as he is for the air war stories he wrote for the pulps. Here is one of his earliest books on the subject, published in 1950.

Keyhoe is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He flew in active service with the Marine Corps, managed the tour of the historic plane in which Bennett and Byrd made their North Pole flight, was aide to Charles Lindbergh after the famous Paris flight, and was chief of information for the Aeronautics Branch, Department of Commerce.

• Download “The Flying Saucers Are Real” 1950, Fawcett Publications

The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin has a collection of The Mike Wallace Interview shows on line including the one he conducted with Major Donald E. Keyhoe in 1958.

The Mike Wallace Interview:
Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe
(March 8, 1958)

That idea Phineas had for trapping half the German Air Force was good. G.H.Q. liked it. Even Major Rufus Garrity took to it. Oh, yes, there was a catch. Half the German Air Force had to fall for it, too.

• Download “Bomb Voyage” (November 1933, Flying Aces)

In the November 1936 issue of Flying Aces, Donald E. Keyhoe introduced Richard Knight, ace pilot and secret agent of the U.S. government. Along with his dame-chasing assistant Larry Doyle, he confronts evil-doers around  the world, flying his specially equipped (and heavily armed) blue Northrup.

Down upon the flood-lit Washington Airport came a sleek Douglas transport. And from it ran a strangely costumed girl wielding a glittering dagger in spirited attempts to protect herself from the burly men who sought to stop her. Only the lightning decision of a tall, well-built man in a car on the driveway saved her. That man was Richard Knight. And this surprising incident was destined to send him upon the most startling adventure of his career—an adventure which, wholly unknown to him, had begun more than half a century before he was born.

• Download “Vultures of the Lost Valley” (November 1936, Flying Aces)