Buck Kent and Lou Parrish arrive at the Crissville Field for an air show only to find another couple of pilots had arrived earlier claiming they were Buck Kent and his pal Lou Parrish! In an effort to get to the bottom of the whole mystery, Buck and his pal say they’re someone else to give the faux Buck and Lou some “Sky Room” in order to see what they’re after. From the September 1929 Air Trails, it’s Raoul Whitfield’s Buck Kent in “Sky Room!”

They crowded “Buck” Kent—and learned what it was to dare the anger of a master pilot!

• Download “Sky Room” (September 1929, Air Trails)

“Bing” Burks didn’t give the new recruits sent down to the squadron much of a chance. How good could a kiwi be? But he found out when Lt. Dunning found himself at the squadron and on Bing’s bad side—but Bing found out when it counted, that the Lieutenant also wore “Hard-Boiled Wings!” From the August 1929 number of Over The Top.

It was a case of rough meet tough when “Bing” Burks and the fighting newcomer declared war.

• Download “Hard-Boiled Wings” (August 1929, Over The Top)

Here is that letter:

Mr. Harold Hersey
Editor: FLYING ACES.

Dear Mr. Hersey:

Back in 1914, a young man who had designed and flown his own plane while still in high school went to call on another young man who had just won considerable attention by designing the first airplane in America to fly with a motorcycle engine.

At that meeting a friendship was born that has endured through all of the years that have intervened since; it was the first contact of two careers that were fated to parallel and interweave through all of the long struggle which resulted in the “flying game” becoming the “aviation industry. The meeting took place in California and today, Richard Hardin, the caller, and Derek White, the young inventor, are together as the moving spirits of the Guardian Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis.

There Is a lot of color and romance In these two careers which have been woven into the strange pattern from which the aviation industry was cut. Pilots, designers, instructors; the two men moved in different localities and lost sight of each other for years And yet continued to climb in the same direction: contributing much to aviation as they climbed.

In 1913, White had become a serious student of aviation while with the Glenn L. Martin Company, government contractors. At that time the field was wide open to the experimenter and there was little public interest except in the “stunts” and the novelty features of flying.

White experimented with a motorcycle motor and a light plane. His experiments were successful and he had the thrill of flying his own ship in a day when very few men had even experienced the thrill of being “aloft.” About the same time, A.V. Roe, who was ultimately to win fame as the designer of the famous Avro plane of war history, was conducting similiar experiments in England. He, too, was successful.

Hardin was still in high school; an adventurous youth who was greatly impressed with the studies of bird flight, conducted by the physics professor, H LaV. Twining, designer of the Twining Ornithopter, a plane that operated with flapping wings. He, too, succeeded in building and flying a ship of his own design and when word of White’s achievement reached him, he waa anxious to meet this other pioneer and compare experiences.

“Right there at that meeting,” says Hardin, “I cemented my decision to make flying my life work. It was hard to see any future in it at that time but after White and I talked it over, I caught a flash of his enthusiasm. I have never regretted it.”

For the next few years the trails of the two experimenters diverged. White started his own airplane plant and operated it under the name of the White Aircraft Works daring the years 1915, and 16. It was a losing venture, in the long run, as the public was not yet ready to accept aviation as a serious factor in the life of the Nation. Hardin, during this time, was a member of the National Guard of California and was continuing his experiments with new designs, many of which he later used. He built and flew several ships of his own In these years, but like White, found very-little profit in the game.

Late in 1916 and in 1917. White temporarily deserted aviation but couldn’t get far away from it. The thrill of speed and motion and adventure was in his blood. He went into the auto racing game and drove a Mercer on all of the big tracks of the West; Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Phoenix, etc. In between races, he designed the first trimotor monoplane in the United States for the proposed trans-Paciflc flight of Lieutenant W.P. Finlay.
It is a good indication of conditions at the time that the plane was never finished because of the lack of financial backing. The attempt, however, started something. Up till that time no one had ever put a tri-motored monoplane on paper. From then on many designers experimented with this type of ship and today the greatest transport planes are of this type.

April of 1917 brought the war, with opportunity for Hardin and disaster for White. The same week that war was declared, White crashed into a fence in a fiercely contested auto race in which he and Roscoe Sarles vied for public favor. The next fourteen months were spent in hospitals and on crutches.

Hardin had joined the French Flying Corps a year and a half before the United States entered the war, with the hope of getting into the famous Lafayette Escadrille. He was disappointed in this ambition but he saw plenty of air action with a French Chasse squadron assigned to the front line.

His office in the Guardian Aircraft Plant today is decorated with pictures drawn by an artistic buddy of his, showing him in action at the front and hailing him as the “greatest trench straffer of them all.” He left the French service with the “Croix de guerre with one palm and with the medal militaire.”

During his convalescence, White turned to his skill with the pen for a living while more active pursuits were denied him. Newspaper and sales promotion work enabled him to carry on during this period and he worked for such accounts as Durant Motor, Pennzoil and the Columbia Tire Corporation. He also scored a newspaper scoop that was notable on the Pacific Coast, obtaining pictures of the take-off in the Navy flight to Hawaii, the P.N.1 and P.N.3, in the face of the official ban on photographers. These were the only pictures obtained.

Hardin, reluctant to abandon a military career that had allowed him a full measure af flying and adventure, went to Morocco with the Sheriffian Escadrille, composed mostly of American adventurers. This was a bombing unit flying under the colors of the Sultan in French bombing planes. It is credited with performing a notable part in the conquering of Abdel Krim.

The interval between his service in the two wars was filled by a year of design work with the Ordinance Engineering Corporation, builders of the Orenco plane. After the Riff excitement he returned to California and entered the employ of the Douglaa Company at Santa Monica, builders of the Douglas torpedo plane. He was instrumental here in the designing of several outstanding special planes built by the Douglaa people.

Meanwhile White was resisting the lure of aviation and building up a successful advertising agency on the basis of his service accounts.

“I did not, however, drop it as a fascinating hobby,” he says, “I continued to design planes and fly them. I could see, however, that at that time, it would take patience and capital to make money out of this new industry. I had the patience and I used it to get the capital.”

In 1926 the chance that he had been waiting for came. He got the opportunity of combining his knowledge of aviation with his sales promotion and business experience. Colonel G.C.R. Mumby, formerly in command of the Western Repair Depot in France and production officer in the British Air Service during the war, went into partnership with Charles A. Warren for the purpose of establishing a school on the West Coast. White was called in to lay out the plans for the school and to handle the advertising and publicity.

Here, for the first time since they met in 1914, the trails of Hardin and White again crossed. Hardin, fresh from an enlistment in the Navy where he had trained flying cadets and won his bars as Engineering officer assigned to the Admiral’s staff, came to the Warren School as Chief engineer and Supervisor of Instruction.

White, however, did not remain long with the Warren School. His success as a pro-motor was so phenomenal that in 1927 he was sought by the Nicholas Beazley Airplane Company of Marshall, Missouri. He accepted the appointment as General Sales Manager of this concern and also established the Marshall Flying School. This school was an immediate success and Destiny prepared to deal a new hand to Derek White.

In the latter part of 1927 Oliver L. Parks and Harry P. Mammen conceived the idea of an Air College, using a field across the river and closer to the City of St. Louis than any field on the Missouri side could posslbly be. They sought a high grade promoter with experience as an instructor and organizer. All trails led to White. In February, 1928, he took charge of the newly organized Parks Air College under terms which led the organizers to bill him as “the highest priced air school executive in the United States.”

Parks Air College was a “natural.” At the end of six months it had signed more students than any school had ever signed in the history of aviation. A whole fleet of planes had been built up to meet the demands of the increasing army of students and the organizers of the College started to look around for new fields to conquer. They decided to build their own plane, and Parks Aircraft Corporation was born.

Once more Destiny tangled the skeins of two careers that had started practically side by side. A wire to California brought Lieutenant “Dick” Hardin on the scene to become Chief engineer of the new Company and Superintendent of all ground school activities.

By October the Parks Air College hud become the largest commercial flying school in the world and White became restless. The job for which he had contracted was done as far as he was concerned and there was no more thrill of the “uphill drag.” With his own capital he established the Guardian Aircraft Corp. and opened an office and small plant in St. Louis.

Hardin joined him in the new venture and in January, at the expiration of his contract with Parks Air College, White moved the Guardian Company to larger querters, at 2500 Texas Ave. He Incorporated, and with Hardin as his Chief engineer, settled down to the designing of a plane which would sell for two thousand dollars.

Today, the plane is emerging rapidly from the blue prints and taking on form under the hammer, the saw, the welder and the plane. The skeleton is spreading out and it is planned to have the plane ready for test by the middle of August. Already fifteen orders for Guardian monoplanes have been received unsolicited, sight unseen, from people who know and have confidence in the sponsors. A flood of inquiries and requests for dealerships are also being received daily.

That isn’t the whole story, though. No plant that Derek White is connected with would bo complete without a school; so the Guardian Ground School has been organised on a principle so different from any aviation school now in existence that it has been seized on avidly by the aviation trade publications as a new development within the industry.

“The idea for the school was a logical outgrowth of my own career,” says White. “I have served in every branch of the industry and I have been alarmed at the tendency to emphasize the rewards and the glamour of flying and to paint a picture of aviation as a ‘game.’

“It isn’t anything of the kind; it is an industry, the fastest growing industry in the world. It doesn’t need adventurers nearly as badly as it needs business men. That is what we are going to turn out in our school; men trained in the business of aviation. In addition to the usual ground work—design, engineering, maintenance, meteorology and all that, we are going to teach them selling, advertising, production and finance. We have the best laboratory possible by allowing them to work with us in the solving of the problems which arise in our own plant.”

There you are. Two men who have tasted practically everything that aviation holds maintain that its biggest rewards are going to go to the men who stay on the ground and are building a school to prove it. That is a new thought for the youth who wants to get into the “Air” business.

                                                        Yours truly,
                                                        William E. Barrett
                                                        207 Stroh Bldg.,
                                                        4641 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, Mo.

Here’s an ad for White’s Guardian Ground School from the April 1929 issue of
Popular Aviation and Aeronautics!

Here, Whitehouse tells the tale of Air Mechanic Robert Townley who, through the misfortunes of war, works his way from the belly of a great Handley Page dropping bombs to front gunner and eventually to piloting the whole plane when the pilot is killed. From the September 1929 Flying Aces it’s Arch Whitehouse’s “Bombing Eagles!”

Editor’s Note: This gripping story of Handley Page Bombers is the first of its kind ever written. Arch Whitehouse, the author, is an ex-war Ace whom you all know. He holds an enviable fighting record as a flyer overseas from 1914-1920. At present he is our technical editor of SKY BIRDS and Flying Aces, as well as the editor of Plane Dope and Happy Landings, our well known departments of last minute flying news. He has handled all types of fighting planes on hundreds of perilous flights. This is one of the finest stories we have ever published. We hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we have.

• Download “Bombing Eagles” (September/October 1929, Flying Aces)

“The Zep Buster” tells the story of young Bud Talbot—a crack shot on the training planes at Spike Center, Arizona. He has a record so good, it’s held up as an example to all the would-be pilots that have been slacking off; this includes a childhood tormentor of his who just happens to be training there as well, Milt Laramy. Unable accept his own shortcomings, Milt cuts Bud down verbally saying he’s a coward and a mama’s boy every chance he gets. And when they are both assigned to the same squadron in Isoudon, Milt only ramps it up. But War proves who has what it takes and who’s the shrinking coward.

From the July 1929 Sky Birds, it’s John Scott Douglas’ “The Zep Buster!”

If you want to be thrilled to the marrow; if you like blazing air stories; if you have any sympathy for the under dog—read this gripping yarn. Hot action! What more could you want?

• Download “The Zep Buster” (July 1929, Sky Birds)

AS A bonus, here’s a brief bio of sorts from the back book jacket cover of The Secret of the Undersea Bell, winner of the Boys’ Life-Dodd, Mead Prize Competition!

JOHN SCOTT DOUGLAS tells us: “It was more to keep my hand in at typing than because of any literary aspirations that in my early years I published scores of brief items in a country newspaper and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a column in my high-school paper, and contributed to the University of Washington Columns. Not until I entered the Graduate School at Harvard, however, did I attempt to write for national magazines. Of the many scripts written during my two years at Harvard but few sold. Nevertheless, at twenty-one, when my first substantial check for a story reached me the day I received my master’s degree, I went to New York, determined to write for a living. Since then I’ve published somewhat over a thousand scripts—fiction from short-shorts to novels, and non-fiction in both article and book lengths.

“Much of this output was based on material gathered in travel through many of our states and three trips to Alaska and seventeen foreign countries of Europe, the West Indies, Central and South America. I am convinced that no amount of research an author can do will give him material as vital as that picked up first hand.

“My hobbies of mountain and desert camping, fresh and salt-water fishing, bee-keeping and photography have a way of creeping into my stories and nonfiction pieces. However, my most interesting personal experiences have been the many months I’ve spent at sea on all manner of ships and boats ranging from freighters to Indian dugouts. 1 was the first writer permitted to make the Westward Cruise on America’s largest lighthouse tender, the Coast Guard cutter Cedar. Some of my most fascinating experiences have been on California fishing boats—purse-seiners, tuna, swordfishing and abalone boats. I’ve spent several months with the deep-sea divers who pry shellfish known as abalones from undersea ledges. When resting after several turns below, the abalone fishermen have been kind enough to put me down in their diving dresses.” The Secret of the Undersea Bell, winner of the Boys’ Life-Dodd, Mead Prize Competition, is based on these first-hand experiences.

And look for more stories by JOHN SCOTT DOUGLAS this year!

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)

As an observer, a loyal member of the Eyes of the Army, Teddy was a knockout. His reports were lengthy affairs crammed with accurate data. He knew every German trench from Dixmude to Cambrai. He could take and read aerial photographs like a wizard.

However, Teddy was stricken with the same weakness, that seemed to beset many observers at the front during the dizzy days of 1917 and 1918. In the gunnery schools he had been taught the art of firing at moving targets with the aid of his ring sight and wind vane. The theory and practice, in school, had been religiously digested by our Teddy, but out at the front where excitement plays a big part in the game, he had forgotten all about laying off for direction, speed of machines, angles of approach and all that data.

When an enemy bus appeared in sight, it was Teddy’s idea to point the muzzle of the gun at the black-crossed vulture, pull the trigger and move the muzzzle so that the tracers appeared to be eating their way dead into the enemy cockpit. Thus, Teddy’s tracers were directed at the enemy machines but his armorpiercing and regular ammunition was perhaps being fired yards ahead or behind and recklessly wasted. Unless the aerial target was within a few yards of the Lewis gun muzzle, such firing and aiming was useless.

An amazing, hair-raising story of a spectacular air battle and an observer who was bitten by a most peculiar bug. It brought him nothing but trouble until, in the thick of the fight something happened that wasn’t on the program—

• Download “Hunted Vultures” (March 1929, Sky Birds)

A war has broken out between the Logan stores and the McCoy chain. Angus McCoy himself plans on flying to Gold Poke to secure the furs he needs—whichever buyer gets there first, gets his business. Sam Goldman, a fur buyer and friend to Rusty Wade is in a tizzy—his rival, Pete Lick, has said he’s going to get that contract and run Sam out of business and he’s hired this dastardly Breed brothers—”Hawk” and “Kid”—to get the job done. Sam asks Rusty to help him and the race is on!

From the pages of the August 1929 Air Trails, it’s our old pal Rusty Wade in Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Sky Trappers!”

Ringed by wolves on the frozen waste, his only hope lay in the birdman who dared the arctic solitudes!

• Download “Sky Trappers” (August 1929, Air Trails)

Bert had been in France for almost two years, including two months over the front with the Lafayette, but had no Huns to his credit. He didn’t want to be known as a cloud-killer, but what can you do when the situation doesn’t present itself….. From the pages of the October 1929 issue of Wings it’s O.B. Myer’s “Cloud-Killer!”

They called him a joy-rider, a cloud-killer—and a war going on! Tremaine waited to answer the slight—and a day came when his guns didn’t jam and his motor carried him through to a winged target.

• Download “Cloud-Killer” (October 1929, Wings)

As a bonus, Obie was featured in Sergeant L.E. Jaeckel’s “American Aviators in the World War” column in The Charlotte Observer (The foremost newspaper of the two Carolinas) Friday July 22nd, 1932 (Page 17). It’s retelling of the events that led to Obie being awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

FIRST LIEUTENANT OSCAR B. MYERS.

THERE comes the time in the career of every aviator when he wants to do something that is just a little beyond the assigned mission. Patrolling in itself should provide enough excitement for any one person. The flyer never knows when he will be called upon to give account of himself, whether on an equal footing with his enemy, or whether to engage in combat with formations many times his equal. Considering all the hazards of war time flying, irrespective of the mission, it would seem that the aviator would be satisfied with the common dangers of his profession without seeking the new.

Ground straffing is an art. Successfully performed, it has been shown what a demoralizing effect it can have upon an enemy, yet it is in all likelihood one of the most dangerous of the aerial missions. Men were trained for it specially. Now and then we find one of our flyers making what might be called a noble experiment of this business on his own. Lieutenant Oscar B. Myers of the 147th Aero Squadron was a fellow who obviously preferred to secure his taste of it by the experimental method.

Near Clerges on September 28th the routine of patrol duty evidently became monotonous for him. Several hundred meters below him there were German troops that could provide him with the action and excitement he craved. Accordingly he swooped down upon them and opened fire with his machine guns. If there has ever been any doubt about the combat qualities of ground straffing, here was irrefutable evidence of its merits. The troops, on their way to the front lines, turned and ran in all directions, throwing panic into the reserves behind them who also sought, such cover as was available.

With the retreat of the troops and the incessant fire from antiaircraft artillery showering him with fusilades becoming uncomfortably close, Lieutenant Myers gained altitude to hunt more action. The little fray in which he had just participated merely whetted his appetite for more. It was not long in coming. Some distance to the northward there appeared a formation of 10 planes, one of which he immediately recognized as an observation plane. Now if there was anything Lieutenant Myers especially wanted to bag it was an observation plane, but how to get to it. It was surrounded by nine Fokkers, all determined to protect their charge at, any cost. As if in answer to his dilemma, two American planes appeared at the moment, and Lieutenant Myers drafted them to assist him. The three machines then launched a vigorous attack upon the enemy formation, Myers not forgetting his chief object.

Throughout the hot combat he did little but fight in an effort to drive away the protection planes. He maneuvered so skillfully that it was not long until he had separated three of the machines from the formation and driven them off. His companions, meanwhile, were having it tooth and nail with the other half dozen contenders. Lieutenant Myers jumped in again noticing that the other planes always closed in on their charge as their ranks were thinned. Finally, with a last great effort, the American trio opened up the enemy flight and Lieutenant Myers grasped his opportunity. He banked above the sextette and dived straight at the observation machine. For a few brief minutes it careened madly, then hurst into flames and fell.

• Download “American Aviators in the World War” (22 July 1932, The Charlotte Observer)

And if that wasn’t enough…

For all his many published stories, O.B. Myer’s didn’t really have any series characters. The few recurring characters he did have in the pages of Dare-Devil Aces, we’ve collected into a book we like to call “The Black Sheep of Belogue: The Best of O.B. Myers” which collects the two Dynamite Pike and his band of outlaw Aces stories and the handful of Clipper Stark vs the Mongol Ace tales. If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love these stories!

We’re back with the third and final of three Ralph Oppenheim’s Three Mosquitoes stories we’re featuring this March for Mosquito Month! And this one’s a doozy! Allied intelligence had learned that the Germans had built a great seaplane, destined to turn the whole tide of the naval war. This seaplane was not only a compact fighting and raiding ship, but it could make remarkable speed and cover remarkable distance. It was even rumored that the Germans proposed to send a whole fleet of these new planes across the Atlantic, with the object of raiding the American coast!

Many had been sent and tried to destroy the Reutz Aircraft Factory where said seaplane was being built and developed but were unsuccessful. Our intrepid Trio has been sent in a huge bomber alone, in an effort to get through and take out the plant. But when they are shot down 45 miles behind enemy lines—it’s Travis who comes up with a plan that will take them into the heart of the beast, through enemy jaws, to complete their mission and take out the plant! Read all about it in Ralph Oppenheim’s “Through Enemy Jaws” from the December 1929 issue of Sky Riders!

Into that maelstrom of screaming lead and crashing shells went the Three Mosquitoes, the dare-devils whom nothing could stop. Into that nest of spies and intrigue they dove, on the most treacherous mission they had ever had. Would the demonic, mysterious enemy seaplane gain through? The lives of millions hung breathlessly in the balance!

• Download “Through Enemy Jaws” (December 1929, Sky Riders)