One of Arch Whitehouse’s many series characters from Flying Aces, Crash Carringer is an American aircraft salesman extraordinaire, adventurer, and soldier of fortune in any Army that came along. He was top man in the field for the Hale Aircraft Corporation of Long Island, the despair of those he selected as his enemies, the envy of those he aided, and at present the particular pal of the British Royal Air Force in the Near East. How much of a pal he was to be this night he could not know, for he was still unaware that the Second World War had broken out in Europe.

• Download Wings for the King” (December 1939, Flying Aces)

“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!

• Download “Hellion Hunch” (August 1938, Flying Aces)