Lester Dent is best remembered as the man behind Doc Savage. But he wrote all number of other stories before he started chronicling the adventures of everyone’s favorite bronze giant. Here we have an action-packed tale of the air whose hero—Major Hercules Gade—bares a striking resemblance everyone’s favorite chemist, Monk Mayfair: “He was pint size, this Yank buzzard. His ears were tufts of gristle. Somebody had once broken his nose. There was long hair on his wrists and the tendons on the backs of his knotty hands stood out like twisted ropes. His face was something to scare babies with. But just now an infectious grin cracked it from ear to ear.”

Herk is sent to the Groupe de Chasse 71 to get an unruly flight in line by any means necessary—which in this case means his fists—and take care of the Baron von Gruppe’s jagdstaffel and a German backed Sinn Fein plot!

They were fighting hounds from Devil’s Island and no man could tame them, but that was before a half-pint major named Hercules blasted them through the sky-trail that had no return.

• Download “Bat Trap” (December 1931, War Aces)

If you enjoyed this story, Black Dog Books has put out an excellent volume collecting 11 of Lester Dent’s early air stories set against the backdrop of World War !. The book includes this story as well as others from the pages of War Birds, War Aces, Flying Aces, Sky Birds and The Lone Eagle. It’s The Skull Squadron! Check it out!

And as a bonus, here’s another article from Lester’s home town paper, The LaPlata Home Press, about his early success selling stories to the pulps while working as a telegraph opperator in Tulsa, Oklahoma!

At 25, Lester Dent Makes Hit As Writer

Will Visit Parents Here Enronte To New York Position
The LaPlata Home Press, LaPlata, MO • 25 December 1930

Lester Dent will leave Tulsa, Oklahoma, the first of January to spend the remainder of the winter in New York City, writing magazine adventure fiction. Mr. Dent is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Bern Dent, of north of LaPlata. and graduated from LaPlata high school in 1923. In going to New York, he is accepting flattering offers made by an eastern publishing house. Mr. Dent expects to visit his parents here enroute east.

Newspaper work usually leads to nothing but more newspaper work but once in a while there are exceptions to that rule. As in the case of Lester Dent, who is now the recipient of flattering offers from New York because of his yarn-spinning in magazine columns as well as daily news sheets.

For more than four years Mr. Dent has been an Associated Press operator and Maintenance man, allied with The Tulsa Tribune. Less than two years ago he commenced to try his hand at fiction writing. He turned out, 13 stories, all of which were rejected, wrote, the fourteenth and found a market. That encouraged him to go on and he has been going better and faster ever since. His marker has included “Popular Stories,” “Air Stories,” ”Top-Notch,” “Action Stories” and “Sky Riders.”

Some of the earlier titles were ”Pirate Cay,” “Death Zone,” “Bucaneers of the Midnight Sun” and “The Thirteenth Million Dollar Robbery.”

Later Mr. Dent’s name appeared over stories called “Vulture Coast,” “The Devil’s Derelict,” “The Skeleton From Moon Cay” and, most recently, “Hell Hop.” The last-named tale attracted the attention of one of the editors of “Sky Riders” in which it is
to appear. Soon after the author received a night letter suggesting that the New York publishing field had a place for writers of his imagination.

Mr. Dent is 25 years old and has been in Tulsa nearly five years, most of that time employed by the Associated Press. He once enrolled in the law school at the University of Tulsa but gave it up, because, he says some what laconically, “it was too much work.” Planning thirteen million-dollar robberies and tales of buccaneers for the delight of the American public that likes its action swift and daring seems easier work, evidently. Now he has the choice of continuing to write the news as it does happen or as it might but probably would not happen.

• Download “At 25, Lester Dent Makes Hit As Writer”
  (25 December 1930, The LaPlata Home Press)