Here, Caffrey tells a simple and short tale of a flight leader, low on gas, trying to bring his green recruits, also low on gas, home without running into any enemy planes. From the February 1929 Flying Aces, it’s Andrew A. Caffrey’s “The Shadow of Death!”

Lost in the fog on their first flight over enemy lines, two Yank flyers thought to be unreliable, prove what manner of men they are in the Shadow of Flying Death!

• Download “The Shadow of Death” (February 1929, Flying Aces)

You all know Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham—that past master at throwing the bull. But here’s the story of one time when the bull threw Phineas—a bull named Rittmeister von Holstein!

From the January 1933 number of Flying Aces!

• Download “The Bull Flight” (January 1933, Flying Aces)

This week we have Sly MacDonald’s “The Sky Salt” from the March 1933 Flying Ace!

“Sky skimmers”—that was what 1st Class Gunner Weaver of the U.S. Navy called the seaplanes that patrolled the English Channel. But that was before a certain morning when an old freighter met up with a U-boat in the choppy seas off the coast of France.

• Download “The Sky Salt” (March 1933, Flying Aces)

They’d threatened Phineas Pinkham with Blois before—and he’d lived to laugh at them. But this time the future of the ace of Boonetown, Iowa, was in the hands of a Brigadier who didn’t exactly like being pushed in the face!

• Download “Shower Kraut” (December 1932, Flying Aces)

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)

It was just too bad they hadn’t started the Caterpillar Club away back in 1918. But you can’t blame them—they didn’t know they were cheating Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham out of his one and only chance to join!

From the November 1932 number of Flying Aces!

• Download “Good to the First Drop” (November 1932, Flying Aces)

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 the fourth and final of our four stories celebrating William E. Barrett’s birthday this month.

His tunic was Bond Street and there was a flair to it that only a tailor with three years of war experience could impart. His breeches were cut wide and were a coral pink. The gloss on his boots could only be attained on a boot costing five pounds—and he carried a swagger stick that was made of cartridge casings, surmounted by a knob that was nothing else but the spark plug out of a crashed German plane.

All in all, the new C.O. was an elegant figure; one to inspire hatred—and a fierce envy in the breast of any pilot. He made the mistake of looking for the hatred and expecting it. He might, if he’d known it, as easily found friendship and liking—

It’s William E. Barrett’s “The C.O.’s Stripes” from the pages of the January 1933 Flying Aces.

There were ribbons on the tunic of that new C.O. that showed he had not felt fear when German lead was singing and death was combing the air—ribbons no coward could have won. Yet now, with nothing in sight below but the pilots of the 19th Pursuit Squadron, their new commander was afraid to land!

• Download “The C.O.’s Stripes” (January 1933, Flying Aces)

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 the third of our four stories celebrating William E. Barrett’s birthday this month. It’s “Handicap Flight” from the pages of the December 1932 Flying Aces.

Word had come through that the yards and factories of Mouzon must be bombed. The De Havillands had been beaten back twice when within sight of the city as had a flight of fourteen ships. Wing had come to the decision that one lone plane may have a better chance than a large group and it all came down to a cut of the cards to decide who would go on the suicide mission!

Death was writing on the black wings of that Yank bomber as it hurtled on toward Mouzon. It was a mad gamble—to send one lone pilot on a mission where eight ships and sixteen men had failed!

• Download “Handicap Flight” (December 1932, Flying Aces)

Major Garrity was fuming in his lair. Outside, Bump Gillis and the boys were waiting like a lot of palpitating schoolgirls for the axe to fall on Phineas Pinkham. But you know Phineas—the kind of guy who could be thrown into an incinerator and come out covered with ice cream!

• Download “The Bat’s Whiskers” (October 1932, Flying Aces)