THIS week we have a the fourth and final tale of the Cuckoo’s Nest from the prolific pen of Alexis Rossoff. The Cuckoo’s Nest stories ran in War Birds in 1930. The Cuckoo’s are an outfit a lot like Keyhoe’s Jailbird Flight—a group of hellions who found themselves afoul of military rules who have been given another chance to die fighting rather than rot in a Blois cell.

The High Command through an agent of Germany’s powerful all-seeing intelligence system, had received the disturbing information of the Cuckoos arrival at the Front. The Cuckoos were forever offering themselves as an obstacle for Germany’s militaristic iron heel to stumble upon. This time the High Command, with much at stake, would tolerate no failure. The ultimatum had been sent out—“Crush the Cuckoos. Destroy them.” But the blackbirds of the A.E.F. were going to take the fight to the enemy and barge in where good little pilots were afraid to fly. They would stop Germany’s entire Air Force and put an end to Baron Phantomas’ reign of terror!

Each day that ghost plane threw its challenge at the Cuckoos. Their guns eagerly ripped the skies for the man who wasn’t there. Mystery wings all but rode them out of the sky until that day when they learned the secret carried to them on the wings of death!

• Download “Baron Phantomas” (November 1930, War Birds)