THIS week we present another of Paul Bissell’s covers for Flying Aces! Bissell is mainly known for doing the covers of Flying Aces from 1931 through 1934 when C.B. Mayshark took over duties. For the December 1931 cover Bissell put us right in the action as Fonck gets the pilot who shot down Guynemer!

Fonck Gets Guynemer’s Slayer

FIVE miles below lies the earth. Above floating white clouds, two planes maneuver, silhouetted dark against the sky. One, a Spad, is piloted by the famous French ace, Rene Fonck; the other, a Rumpler, has in its cockpit Captain Wissemann, who just three weeks before had downed France’s beloved airman—Guynemer.

A dive puts the Spad under the Rumpler’s tail, and Fonck maintains his position there where the enemy bullets cannot reach him. Now back on his stick! Carefully he brings the red machine in line with his Vickers. Then one short burst—just six shots, but six shots from France’s super-marksman of the air. And the German pilot is dead at the stick, a bullet through his head!

Three of the other five bullets have found their mark in the observer. A fourth has punctured the gas tank. The Rumpler’s tail kicks up, the whole plane twisting as it goes over, throwing the observer out of the cockpit and clear of the machine. For an instant he hangs, twisting and clutching, before he starts his plunge, racing the already burning plane to earth.

The Rumpler, a mass of twisting flame, spins crazily downward. Its wings fall away, and now, three miles straight down it plunges, a smoking meteor, carrying in its fiery cockpit the body of Captain Wissemann, brought down by Rene Fonck. Guynemer’s death is avenged!

“Fonck Gets Guynemer’s Slayer”
Flying Aces, December 1931 by Paul j. Bissell