“Lives of the Aces in Pictures – Part 32: Wendell W. Rogers” by Eugene Frandzen
Back with another of Eugene Frandzen’s “Lives of the Aces in Pictures” from the pages of Flying Aces Magazine. The series ran for almost four years with a different Ace featured each month. This time around we have the February 1935 installment featuring the illustrated biography of that famous Canadian Ace—Captain William Wendell Rogers!
RFC Captain Rogers is credited with nine aerial victories. All these accomplished while flying Nieuports. His most famous victory was singlehandedly shooting down an enormous Gotha G bomber piloted by Blue Max winner Hauptmann Rudolf Kleine—the two crew members, the Pilot Lt von der Nahmar and rear gunner, Lt.Werner Bulowius chose to jump out while Hauptmann Klein remained aboard and went down with the ship.
Canada Veterans Hall of Valour sketches out his later life:
For his achievement, Rogers was awarded the Military Cross (MC) and a special commendation from General Trenchard, Head of the RFC. Shortly afterwards he took up instructional duties with the RAF in Canada for the rest of the war.
Coming to Saint John N.B. in 1924, Rogers was soon active in promoting a Flying Club and the city’s first airport, constructed at Millidgeville.
Rogers first operated a General Motors agency in Saint John N.B. In 1933 he joined the Irving Oil Company in charge of their trucking operations. In 1934 management of the Saint John Motor Line was added to his duties and in 1940 he became President of SMT (Eastern) Ltd.
In October 1938 he was appointed Commanding Officer of No. 117 RCAF Fighter Squadron (non permanent) with the rank of Squadron Leader and there was a rush of applications to join the unit, which had been established in Saint John.
He married Sally Head of Charlottown PEI and they had two sons; Frederick and Lloyd. In 1949, with his two sons, he established a plastic manufacturing business under the firm name of Rogers Bros., Ltd. On January 11, 1967 he died in Saint John hospital after a long illness.
“Lives of the Aces in Pictures – Part 31: Oswald Boelcke” by Eugene Frandzen
Back with another of Eugene Frandzen’s “Lives of the Aces in Pictures” from the pages of Flying Aces Magazine. The series ran for almost four years with a different Ace featured each month. This time around we have the January 1935 installment featuring the illustrated biography of Hauptmann Oswald Boelcke!
Boelcke is regarded by many as the father of air combat—he developed a series of rules known as the Dicta Boelcke that espoused fighter tactics based upon aircraft formation rather than upon the characteristics of any individual machine. By 1916 Boelcke had amassed more ‘kills’ than any other German pilot—40, many above the Verdun battlefield. And had a chest full of awards and honors. Sadly, it his death is a result of not following his own rules of engagement—which mandated never to close in on a single combatant when others are also pursuing it—as he crashed into one of his fellow ships while trying to avoid a French pilot.
“The Suicide Strafe” by Major George Fielding Eliot
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.
“Guile of the Griffon” by Arch Whitehouse
Join Kerry Keen and Barney O’Dare as “The Griffon” returns with another exciting adventure.
Down through the ebony night dived a strange, black amphibian. Glistening in the reflected light of the great Montauk beam, it glided to the water and taxied to a ramp where two men stood in the shadows. And from the cockpit of that eerie craft crawled a hideously deformed creature—a man whose very existence was a cruel mockery of the grave. “I built—†he croaked, leering at the taller man, “not one plane, but two. The other,†he continued in a queer cackle, “went to a man whom you, Keen, will kill—though as yet you’ve never even heard of him . . . .â€
“Today We Die” by Frederick C. Painton
The names of the men in that strange, ill-assorted squadron were listed only in the most secret annals of Allied Intelligence. To everyone else they were known merely as the Squadron of the Dead. Americans, British, Russians—even Germans—made up their ranks, and only one bond held them together. They had all been condemned to die! An unusual story of an unusual squadron.
“The Falcon Strikes” by Major George Fielding Eliot
Lieutenant Jim Davison, a Yank serving with the Royal Flying Corps in the Caucasus, is caught between the Russians and the Germans as he tries to help Prince David of Georgia recover a lost treasure.
“Secret of the Hell Hawks” by Ralph Oppenheim
An exciting Three Mosquitoes adventure!
To the Three Mosquitoes:
   I turn to you three gallants as stand in the shadow of death. For my crime I must die. But before I die there is information I dare convey only to you three, in whose hands alone it may serve to expiate the damage my honesty, rather than my treachery, has caused.
   If this reaches you in time, and if you are moved by a doomed man’s last prayer, speed to Vincennes and enable me to speak with you before they execute me at dawn.
                                - Emil Rodet.
