Alden McWilliams’ illustrated tribute to the pioneer fliers of the early days of aviation was called “They Had What it Takesâ€, and this week we bring you the 13th installment, which appeared in the February 1938 Flying Aces. It features Bernt Balchen, the Norwegian pilot known as the “Viking of the Skiesâ€.
In the late thirties Flying Aces ran Alden McWilliams’ monthly illustrated tribute to the pioneer fliers of the early days of aviation which was called “They Had What it Takesâ€. In the January 1938 issue they featured Dick Merrill. Considered the greatest airline pilot of his time, Merrill accomplished the first trans-Atlantic round trip when he flew to London to retrieve photographs of the Coronation.
Next week McWilliams looks at the career of Bernt Balchen, the Norwegian known as the “Viking of the Skies”.
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!â€
This is the second story in Arch Whitehouse’s series about flying newspaperman Tug Hardwick. Tug and his sidekick, Beansie Bishop, knew where they could find Old Man Trouble if they wanted him. Shanghai was the place—for the welcome they’d get there would be a rousing one profusely punctuated with bullets! But meanwhile, Old Man Trouble had grown tired of waiting for them. That was something those two Yanks didn’t know—until a man fell at their feet with a knife in his back!
“Coffin†Kirk sought rest—but it was stark tragedy that he found in that jungle village at the foot of massive Mount Dulit. For the “death that does not speak†had cut a ghastly swath through that peaceful Kayan settlement—had left but a single horrified native to describe the merciless wrath of the “steel eagles that leap out of solid rock.†Yet Kirk could not turn back. And Fate was beckoning him onward along a path that led to— the fires of hell itself!
“Twenty million pounds to fortify Singapore … Twenty minutes for complete destruction … Twenty days to embroil the world in war!” That fateful warning meant that Britain’s proud new naval base was doomed—doomed by the Circle of Death! And when the masked members of that veiled power learned that “Coffin” Kirk stood in the path of their poisonous fangs, they only laughed sardonically. For Kirk was their most hated enemy. Two scores would be settled with a single blow!
Joe Archibald with a humorous Ambrose Hooley and Muley Spinks air novelet!
When this pair of wild aces get started, they ruin anybody’s old war!
Joe Archibald also did the illustrations for the humorous Phineas Pinkham stories that appeared in Flying Aces every month for 13 years.
Here is the second of The Three Mosquitoes stories that were set in pre-WWII China. There isn’t much actual Air War in this one but there is still plenty of action as the Mosquitoes try to rescue a Chinese warlord’s son from the invading Japanese.
“Shut up and get a shovel!†Such was the impudent retort that Crash Carringer flung at old F.S.F. Winters, C.O. of No. 609, Britain’s brave little air post in the wilds of India’s Afridi-ridden North West Frontier. And that retort tartly expressed the nervy nature of the hard-shooting Yank warplane salesman. For Crash was tough. He needed all his toughness, too. For he was roaring’ off to a “date with Death†in the nullahs to prove that blood is thicker than— tobacco!
