Secret Service agent and flying reporter Buzz Benson approached Sunkist Airport in his slick speedy Corsair for the worst assignment he ever had. Ten days before, three gigantic Boeing transports had vanished from the sky—never to appear again. Was it another Jap plot or something more mysterious?
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.
The dread skull emblem on their planes was the only flag the men of the Squadron of the Dead would follow, and to them fell the deadly tasks which no other squadron dared attempt. Yet powerful as they had become in the service of the Allies, a more terrible force had organized against them. For the German chief of Imperial Intelligence had proclaimed the grim order: “Every man in the Squadron of the Dead must be destroyed!”
The Squadron of the Dead return for another mission, but this one is unlike any they have taken on before.
Death lay behind those men in the somber, black uniforms, for every man in that squadron had been sentenced to die. Death lay ahead of them, for to them were assigned the grim missions no other squadron dared to take. Then at last came a task which even those ghosts of the war skies dreaded to face—yet it was a task in which death played no part.
Here is another high flying adventure of “Cyclone” Bill Garrity and The Devildog Squadron. For months the grim spectre of that German staffel had stalked up and down the Front, dropping its sinister messages of death upon British and French squadrons. And now at last it struck at the flying Marines. For out of the cloud mists over that Devildog drome a white-winged German plane swooped low, and from it came the threat of doom—a black coffin holding the body of a Devildog pilot.
If you thought Elmer Hubbard and Pokey Cook were a couple of wild Indians before, just wait until you see them with their war paint and feathers on! Even C.O. Mulligan had to listen to their war whoops with a smile.
Once again the Devildog Squadron is roaring into action!
Under guard in his hut—on a double charge of treason and murder! He had led two men out on a secret mission and they had not returned—but he had brought straight to his hidden drome a flock of Boche. And that night he was found beside the body of the man who had called him a spy—and the man was dead, shot through the heart! Yet for Larry Brent, one of those twenty loyal hellions the Boche had named Devildogs, there was always a way out—even though it led to the Squadron Without a Name.
Reporter/Flying Ace Billy “Buzz” Benson returns with a new adventure. Westward toward Shanghai, where smoldered a fire of war that threatened to blaze forth and enflame the whole world, a Yankee submarine cut through the waters of the Pacific. Deep in its hold was the Sea Hawk, the plane chosen to carry Buzz Benson straight through the Japanese air zone with secret orders that would mean war or peace. But not twenty cable lengths away steamed a Japanese sub, and in its hold was another Sea Hawk—awaiting the moment when Benson should begin his mad air race to Shanghai!
Here they are again—that bunch of flying, fighting Devildogs—Lucky Lane and the Three Lunatics, Cyclone Bill Garrity, and the rest of the mad Marines. And fighting against them is a silent, unseen menace—a strange, black shadow that shrouds whole formations in its sable cloak of death, and sends them reeling down—to doom.
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 moment Buzz Benson flew over that landing field near the Mississippi River, he knew that something strange, something ghastly, had happened. A weird glow filled the air, and a white dust coated the field like snow. And on that tarmac, where men lay huddled and telephone bells remained unanswered, nothing moved— nothing stirred. Yet it was not death that had claimed them.
This story features the wacky duo of Elmer Hubbard and Pokey Cook. See how they manage to get themselves into and out of hot water once again.
By day he is a flying reporter for the Los Angeles Mercury newspaper, but Billy “Buzz” Benson’s real job is much more dangerous. He is a secret agent and pilot extraordinaire for the U.S. military. And his chief mission is keeping the emerging Japanese threat in the Pacific at bay. In this tale he is on hunt for “The Fiends of Fujiyama” and some stolen experimental weapons.
Everyone likes a fat guy, unless they have to fly with him. “Tubby” Gorkin could barely fit into the rear observer’s cockpit and no pilot wanted him as their observer. Now, with a new hard edged C.O. coming on, it looked like the end of Tubby’s dream of becoming a pilot.
Meet “The Squadron of The Dead.” Reminiscent of the Dirty Dozen, condemned airmen from different nations are banded together in one squadron to battle the Germans in WWI. Their only hope is to die in combat rather than be returned to their countries to face the gallows. Author Frederick C. Painton was became a WWII correspondent and died of a heart attack on a Guam airfield while covering the Pacific war.
