For Harry Steeger’s trio of Popular Publication’s titles—Battle Aces, Dare-Devil Aces and Battle Birds—Mr. Cruickshank developed continuing characters that ran generally in short novelettes each month. Following on from the success of The Sky Wolf in Battle Aces, Cruickshank was asked to develop a series for the newly premiered sister magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. For Dare-Devil Aces, Cruickshank developed his best known war hero—the rough and tumble Captain Bill Dawe—The Sky Devil! Cruickshank based Bill Dawe on his own infantry commander from WWI.

There was no better flight in France than the Sky Devil and his Brood. Led by Captain Bill Dawe, the famous Yank ace known to all of France as the Sky Devil, the brood consisted of Chuck Verne, Mart Bevin, Slim Skitch and Slug Walton. The crimson devil insignia on their silver Spads brought fear to any German pilot unlucky enough to meet them in the air. But the Sky Devil’s greatest enemy might just be his own C.O., Major Petrie, who had been railroaded into command of 120 Squadron over Dawe’s head. Jealous of Dawe’s popularity, Petrie will do anything to bring down the Sky Devil and his Brood!”

Sky Devil flew through the Hell Skies of 29 adventures in the pages of Dare-Devil Aces from 1932-1935. Cruickshank returned to the savior of the Western Front in six subsequent stories several years later. The first two were in the pages of Sky Devils (June 1939) and Fighting Aces (March 1940). The other four ran in Sky Fighters (1943-1946) where he was aged up and moved to the Second World War where Bill Dawe changes his name to get into the air service and flys along side his son!

Here we present The Sky Devil’s premier outing from the April 1932 issue of Dare-Devil Aces, it’s “Sky Devil’s Trap!”

Swiftly those Yank bombers ripped in, blasting that fake staffel to hell. They didn’t see the Fokkers swinging down from above; didn’t guess they were cold meat—snared in a blood trap from which only the yammering guns of one doomed sky devil could hope to snatch them.

• Download “Sky Devil’s Trap” (April 1931, Dare-Devil Aces)

Here is a listing of Harold F. Cruickshank’s SKY DEVIL stories.

title	magazine	date	vol	no
1932
Sky Devil’s Trap	Dare-Devil Aces	Apr	01	02
The Green Devils	Dare-Devil Aces	Jul	02	01
Hell’s Skipper	Dare-Devil Aces	Sep	02	03
The Sky Devil’s Brood	Dare-Devil Aces	Oct	02	04
Killer’s Drome	Dare-Devil Aces	Nov	03	01
The Sky Tiger	Dare-Devil Aces	Dec	03	02
1933
Captain von Death	Dare-Devil Aces	Jan	03	03
The Flaming Ace	Dare-Devil Aces	Feb	03	04
Sky Devil’s Trap	Dare-Devil Aces	Mar	04	01
The Haunted Fokker	Dare-Devil Aces	Apr	04	02
Buzzards’ Brand	Dare-Devil Aces	May	04	03
Torpedo Buzzards	Dare-Devil Aces	Jun	04	04
The Bat Patrol	Dare-Devil Aces	Jul	05	01
Hell Buzzards Nest	Dare-Devil Aces	Aug	05	02
The Sky Cobra	Dare-Devil Aces	Sep	05	03
The Outlaw Ace	Dare-Devil Aces	Oct	05	04
Ace of Devils	Dare-Devil Aces	Nov	06	01
Skeleton’s Drome	Dare-Devil Aces	Dec	06	02
1934
The Sky Pirates	Dare-Devil Aces	Jan	06	03
Staffel of Hate	Dare-Devil Aces	Feb	06	04
The Flaming Vulture	Dare-Devil Aces	Mar	07	01
No-Man’s Squadron	Dare-Devil Aces	Apr	07	02
The Storm Buzzard	Dare-Devil Aces	May	07	03
The Derelict Patrol	Dare-Devil Aces	Jun	07	04
Staffel of Skeletons	Dare-Devil Aces	Jul	08	01
Graveyard Staffel	Dare-Devil Aces	Sep	08	02
1935
The Stratosphere Patrol	Dare-Devil Aces	Feb	09	03
The Undersea Buzzard	Dare-Devil Aces	Jun	10	03
Staffel of Dead Men	Dare-Devil Aces	Sep	11	02
1939
Wings of the Brave	Sky Devils	Jun	01	06
1940
A Torch for the Damned	Fighting Aces	Mar	01	01

When Cruickshank brought The Sky Devil back in the 40’s for Sky Fighters, he moved his theater of operations from the First World War to the Second World War. Older, more reckless and enlisted under false pretenses, he’s fighting the good fight and watching out for his son as well!

1943
Sky Devil and Son	Sky Fighters	Jan	28	02
Return of the Sky Devil	Sky Fighters	Mar	28	03
1946
Settlement in Full	Sky Fighters	Win	33	01
Sky Route to Hell	Sky Fighters	Spr	33	02

We’ve collected and published all 29 of The Sky Devil’s stories from Dare-Devil Aces into two volumes—Hell’s Skipperand Ace of Devils! In addition, we’ve posted many of the post-Popular stories on the site here (just click on the “Sky Devil” tag below). The books can be picked up through the usual sources—Adventure House, Mike Chomko Books and Amazon!

Adventures with Pulps

The Leader Post, Regina, Canada • 6 September 1974, p14

EDMONTON (CP) — Harold Cruickshank says a “green hungry monster’’ has swallowed up the kind of adventure literature he once wrote and peddled to pulp magazines.

Cruickshank, 81, has spent most of his life creating action-adventure heroes but says his brand of story has been replaced with “sex, violence, and pornography, the very things which we tried to keep from the eyes of our younger folk.”

For 55 years Mr. Cruickshank, whose characters include the Sky Devil and Keko the wolf, wrote for pulp magazines, those publications printed on newsprint rather than fine paper.

During his peak he knocked off eight 6,000-word stories a month with titles like The Village of the Living Dead, Judgment of the War Gods and Where Death Lurks Deep.

Using pseudonyms, some magazines ran as many as three Cruickshank stories in a single issue.

“Certainly the pulps caried stories of violence, but it was a violence of a defensive nature.

“When we killed somebody it was because we knew damn well he was about to kill us, not out of any desire to kill.”

Mr. Cruickshank’s war adventure stories were based on his own combat experience during two world wars.

His best-known war hero, First World War flying ace Capt. Bill Dawe, The Sky Devil, had a real life model in Mr. Cruickshank’s own infantry commander.

He said young readers who patterned themselves after heroes like the Sky Devil and formed fan clubs to honor the fictional adventurers were doing a good thing.

The pulp magazines such as Battle Stories, Dare-Devil Aces and Sky Fighters, popular between the 1920s and the early 1950s, sold for a quarter or less.

“The critics thought the pulps should be hidden under rocks and only read on rainy days,” said Mr. Cruickshank.

“Some of the greatest writers in the world wrote for the pulps. People who also wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and Redbook.”

“A writer for the pulp magazines had to be continually alert to cope with the changing trends. And you had to compete with the cream of the pulp people.

“When I first started off the demand was for war stories. When they faded you had to switch to air war stories.”

When that fad passed a demand for wilderness adventure grew and Cruickshank met it with his profitable series about Keko the wolf.

The series jelled during the Depression when Mr. Cruickshank saw a German shepherd and a golden collie playing together in the snow.

“At that point I conceived in ray mind’s eye the product of a mating between a wolf and a collie.

“I developed this idea into a series of animal adventure stories running several years in one of the western magazines. I later compiled the stories into a book.**

Mr. Cruickshank launched his career when he was asked to write about his war comrades in Belgium in 1918.

He received a prize for a story and continued writing in his spare time in Alberta.

In 1923 he sold his first major piece to Western Home Monthly, Chatelaine’s forerunner, and a demand grew for his stories.

“For 55 years I wrote more magazine stories than most writers in the country, the U.S. and elsewhere and nobody cared.

“Now they come around giving me halos for what I’ve done. Not that I’m complaining, you understand, I always considered I was just doing a job, like a carpenter or anybody else.”

Mr. Cruickshank now writes technical guides for would-be writers and instructional articles on homesteading for government publications.

The article above Is a combination of two versions of the same article. The one in The Regina Leader Post is the most complete version. The one in the Advocate is more edited, but includes the final paragraph.

• Download “Adventures with Pulp” (September 6, 1974, The Leader Post)
• Download “Heroes of pulp magazines replaced by sex, violence” (July 22, 1974, The Advocate)

Here we have Sky Devil’s second appearance after his run in Dare-Devil Aces in the premiere issue of Popular’s new air anthology title Fighting Aces! In what is probably an unpublished story found in the files from the original run five years earlier, Bill Dawe—America’s Sky Devil—and his Brood had been ordered to Paris, to take part in a general allied army show that was being put on for the sole purpose of stepping up the morale of the French citizenry. Unfortunately, mock warfare turns into the real thing!

Captain Bill Dawe—you’ll like the guy—the way he fights in an open sky, the thrust of his jaw—the beat of his heart inside of his shirt! A fighting eagle brings his brood to rest, and lights the skies of the Western Front with a blazing torch for the damned!

• Download “A Torch for the Damned” (April 1940, Fighting Aces)

For more great tales of Sky Devil and his Brood by Harold F. Cruickshank, check out our new volume of his collected adventures in Sky Devil: Ace of Devils—Nowhere along the Western Front could you find a more feared crew, both in their element and out. The Sky Devil and his Brood could always be counted on to whip Germany’s best Aces, out-scrap entire squadrons of Boche killers, or tackle not one, but two crazed Barons with an Egyptology fetish! But what happens when they find themselves up in a dirigible fighting a fleet of ghost zeppelins, or down in the English Channel battling ferocious deep water beasts, or even behind enemy lines dealing with a crazed Major Petrie? Plenty, and you can read it all here! Pick up your copy today at all the usual outlets—Adventure House, Mike Chomko Books and Amazon!

Here we have Sky Devil’s first appearance after his run in Dare-Devil Aces in the pages of the aptly named Sky Devils. Bill Dawe works a hunch as only he can that an old chateau that is supposedly neutral ground between the Allies and the Boche is actually a front for German forces! From June 1939 it’s “Wings of the Brave!”

This wasn’t the ordinary flame of Spandau Fire menacing the American Sky Devil’s tail—but the fearsome blaze of the Baron Von Ryter’s world-famous battle insignia!

• Download “Wings of the Brave” (June 1939, Sky Devils)

For more great tales of Sky Devil and his Brood by Harold F. Cruickshank, check out our new volume of his collected adventures in Sky Devil: Ace of Devils—Nowhere along the Western Front could you find a more feared crew, both in their element and out. The Sky Devil and his Brood could always be counted on to whip Germany’s best Aces, out-scrap entire squadrons of Boche killers, or tackle not one, but two crazed Barons with an Egyptology fetish! But what happens when they find themselves up in a dirigible fighting a fleet of ghost zeppelins, or down in the English Channel battling ferocious deep water beasts, or even behind enemy lines dealing with a crazed Major Petrie? Plenty, and you can read it all here! Pick up your copy today at all the usual outlets—Adventure House, Mike Chomko Books and Amazon!

IF YOU can’t make it to PulpFest in Columbus this weekend, you can still get copies of our new books online from the usual outlets. Both of our new books—Harold F. Cruickshank’s Sky Devil: Ace of Devils and Donald E. Keyhoe’s Captain Philip Strange: Strange Hell—are now available to order online from Adventure House, Mike Chomko Books and Amazon!

While you’re waiting for the books to arrive, why not check out some of the extras we’ve put on line for each book to whet your appetite. For Cruickshank’s second volume of Sky Devil tales Ace of Devils we’ve posted the original pulp scans from Dare-Devil Aces magazine of the opening page art so you can see how it would have looked if you were reading the stories back in the 1930’s when they were originally published. You can also read the opening of the stories in the scans.

For the latest release of the weird World War I adventures of Donald E. Keyhoe’s Captain Philip Strange we have the original full page scans of the opening artwork for each of the six stories collected in Strange Hell! As we did for the last volume, we’re posting the full page scan so you can read a bit of story and enjoy Eugene M. Frandzen’s art in all its glory from the pages of Flying Aces magazine. Painton’s Squadron also uses Frandzen’s art, but here in the bedsheet sized issues of Flying Aces you get those glorious painted images Frandzen would do—much better than his line art.

And the piece de resistance of any Strange book—Chris’ great cutout artwork he does for each of the stories! There are only six this time—but they’re all winners. You can check them out on the Strange Hell Design page!

Both books are available for $16.99 wherever our books are sold, so pick up both today! You can order online from Adventure House, Mike Chomko Books and Amazon!

First, we have the lastest in our Captain Philip Strange series—back with six more weird WWI stories in Strange Hell! A mental marvel from birth, who used his talents on stage as a boy, Philip Strange is now known as “The Phantom Ace of G-2″ by the Allies during WWI. The German Empire has unleased Hell on Earth! The dead are climbing out of their graves and giant skeletons attack the living. Heads are detonating and soldiers are turning to bronze. But flying to the rescue like an avenging angel is America’s own “Brain Devil,” Captain Philip Strange, the phantom ace of G-2 Intelligence. Whether it’s deadly bridges or killer broadcasts, when the Allies need a miracle they pray for Philip Strange! When World War I gets weird, only America’s own “Phantom Ace of G-2” has a ghost of a chance against the supernatural slaughter. Captain Philip Strange in his strangest cases yet from the pages of Flying Aces magazine!

Our other title is from the prolific pen of Harold F. Cruickshank. Sky Devil: Ace of Devils collects the second half of Cruickshank’s stories about The Sky Devil and his Brood—Lieutenants “Chuck” Verne, “Slug” Walton, Mart Bevan, “Slim” Skitch and the maverick peelot, Tom Foster! Nowhere along the Western Front could you find a more feared crew, both in their element and out. The Sky Devil and his Brood could always be counted on to whip Germany’s best Aces, out-scrap entire squadrons of Boche killers, or tackle not one, but two crazed Barons with an Egyptology fetish! But what happens when they find themselves up in a dirigible fighting a fleet of ghost zeppelins, or down in the English Channel battling ferocious deep water beasts, or even behind enemy lines dealing with a crazed Major Petrie?

This volume is bursting with fifteen action-packed air tales of those riders of the Hell trail—including the seminal story we unwittingly left out of the first volume where Dawe is rooked out of command of the 120 Squadron in leu of the frequently simpering Major Petrie.

In addition to these two volumes we’ll have all of our other titles that are still in print as well as our convention exclusive—Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Kirk. So if you’re planning on coming to Columbus for PulpFest this year, stop by our table and say hi and pick up our latest releases!

IT’S HARD to believe it’s already been ten years since we introduced you to Jed Garrett, aka Captian Babyface, and his faithful dog Click, the hell-hound, but it has. It was ten years ago today Age of Aces Books published it’s first—Captain Babyface: The Complete Adventures, gathering together all 10 of Steve Fisher’s tales of Captain Babyface and his battles against the skull-visaged Mr. Death that ran in the pages of Dare-Devil Aces in 1936.

Over the past ten years we’ve published the best names in weird World War I fiction from the tattered pages of the old pulp magazines. In addition to Steve Fisher, we’ve published work from the illustrious likes of Robert J. Hogan (The Red Falcon and Smoke Wade), Donald E. Keyhoe (Captain Philip Strange, The Vanished Legion and The Jailbird Flight); C.M. Miller (Chinese Brady), Ralph Oppenheim (The Three Mosquitoes), William E. Barrett (The Iron Ace), Robert M. Burtt (Battling Grogan), O.B. Myers (The Blacksheep of Belogue), Arch Whitehouse (Coffin Kirk), Harold F. Cruickshank (Sky Devil), William Hartley (Molloy & McNamara), and Frederick C. Painton (The Squadron of the Dead). That’s quite a list and we’ve got more to come!

We’ve tried to make our website a place to help you Journey back to an Age of Aces by not only featuring content about our books—the authors we’ve published and artist we’ve printed, but also other aspects of the old air pulps that don’t make it into our books as well—The pulp covers and the stories behind them, the lives of the aces in pictures, and their most thrilling sky fights!

And there’s free fiction Fridays when we frequently post stories that can be downloaded and read! Since it’s our tenth year we’re trying to have more frequent content up on the site and more stories—trying to increase from one or two a month to practically every Friday—and from the authors we’ve published as well as recurring website favorites—Joe Archibald’s Phineas Pinkham and Lt. Frank Johnson’s Silent Orth.

So stop back often to journey back and here’s hoping for 10 more great years bringing you the best of old air pulps in a new package!

Here we have a story from the December 1933 issue of Sky Fighters. In Night Eagle Cruickshank tells a tale of Squadron Twenty tasked with taking out a German ammo dump and meeting with little success.

Johnny Blair was all set to smash the german ammo dump to smithereens—but his bombs proved to he duds!

• Download “Night Eagle” (December, 1933, Sky Fighters)

For more great tales by Harold F. Cruickshank, check out Sky Devil: Hell’s Skipper—All along the Western front, everyone was out to get The Sky Devil’s Brood! There was no better flight in France. Led by Captain Bill Dawe, the famous Yank ace known to all of France as the Sky Devil, the brood consisted of Chuck Verne, Mart Bevin, Slim Skitch and Slug Walton. The crimson devil insignia on their silver Spads brought fear to any German pilot unlucky enough to meet them in the air. But the Sky Devil’s greatest enemy might just be his own C.O., Major Petrie, who had been railroaded into command of 120 Squadron over Dawe’s head. Jealous of Dawe’s popularity, Petrie will do anything to bring down “The Sky Devil’s Brood!”

His own squadron called him “Mud” because he spent his leave up front with the infantry and his air hours patrolling their death-infested forward zone to protect them. But to those doughboys who every day defied the fury of the enemy barrage—his name was not mud.

• Download “The Solo Skipper” (February 1935, Flying Aces)

Years drop from a natural born fighter pilot, and “no combat” rules are forgottenf as he sheds his role of instructor to zoom through war-torn skies on a self-appointed mission of revenge!

• Download “Return of the Sky Devil” (March 1943, Sky Fighters)