THIS week we have a story from the pen of a prolific pulp author and venerated newspaper man—Frederick C. Painton.
Painton gives us his take on the cowboy war bird. In it, the cowboy in question is the mesquite Midget, Billy Sanders, from Jim Sills’ Bar-Bee Ranch. An old hand at rounding up the Boche in the air, he finds Jim Sills’ boy Harv now in his squadron. The two come up against Boche air ace von Steffen who seems to have a charmed life and cannot be touched, but when he shoots down yung Harv, the Midget is left with no choice than to break his sky-jinx!

From the pages of the November 1928 issue of Triple X Magazine—so called because it featured air, western and war stories each month—it’s Frederick C. Painton’s “Sky Herdin’ Heinie!”

They called the German ace a Sky-Jinx and said his plane couldn’t be shot down. But Midget, the cowboy-flier, didn’t believe in jinxes and he swore to kill the man who had shot down his friend and old range buddy.

• Download “Sky Herdin’ Heinie” (November 1928, Triple X Magazine)

Frank Richardson Pierce is probably best remembered for his prolific career in the Western Pulps. Writing under his own name as well as two pen names—Erle Stanly Pierce and Seth Ranger—Pierce’s career spanned fifty years and produced over 1,500 short stories, with over a thousand of these appearing in the pages of Argosy and the Saturday Evening Post.

Pierce was born in 1881 in Greenfield, Massachusetts but raised on the west coast. A graduate of the University of Washington, he served for a year and a half in the US Navy as a boatswain’s mate and worked for the city of Seattle as a clerk stenographer. He began writing travel articles about the northwest for various motorcycle trade journals and later progressed to short story writing.

Pierce draws upon his knowledge of the Pacific Northwest from his reported fourteen different motorcycle trips to and through the Alaska territory for his story of rival news-reels services covering the first woman to fly over the North Pole. The story features Rusty Wade, Pierce’s rough and tumble red-headed pilot for hire looking for his big financial break.

A story of daring pilots and news-reel men on the far sky trails of the Northland.

• Download “The Sky Fool” (December 1928, Air Trails)

And as a bonus, here’s an article from Mr. Pierce’s former home town paper, The San Bernardino Daily Sun, about his successful career in the pulps!

Graduate of Redlands School 25 Years Ago Now Writes Scores of Stories Yearly for Magazines

Thousands of Readers Know Frank Richardson Pierce Under Two Names; Spends Week-End Visiting Foothill City Home
By MAURICE S. SULLIVAN
San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, CA • 10 May 1932

When Frank Richardson Pierce graduated from Redlands’ old Kingsbury school, about 25 years ago, he didn’t know that some day he should have two names.

Thousands of readers of the so-called pulps—magazines printed on rough paper—know a writer named Seth Ranger, and eagerly follow his stories of the frontier days, the logging country, Alaska and the Orient. Some of them also know a writer named Frank Richardson Pierce, but the latter has his own distinct following, who watch for his stories Just as do the devotees of Seth Ranger.

Frank Richardson Pierce and Seth Ranger are the same writer. He lives now in Seattle, but he spent his boyhood in Redlands. Whenever—in one of his stories—he needs a small city setting, or a town just over the mountains from the desert, his mind goes back to the Redlands of his youth and under another name Redlands goes into the story.

He spent the last week-end here, at the home of his father, Martin F. Pierce, 24 East Fern avenue. He was taking a brief vacation after having completed “Timber War.”

Frank Pierce is one of those talented persons who turn out stories for the pulps In a seemingly endless stream, while at the same time producing an occasional yarn for the slicks—smooth paper magazines. Howard Marsh, a Redlands resident; Fred McIsaac and H. Redford Jones are others who have the faculty.

To those persons who spend months trying to fashion a readable story, revising and rewriting, the skill of Mr. Pierce and his co-workers is amazing. In one year this writer sold 121 stories, at the rate of about 10 each month: short stories, novelettes and serials of novel length.

Conversing with Mr. Pierce one learns that this extraordinary success, as in the case of most writers, has a basis of hard work and study. He had to learn his trade by practice and by examining the technique of those who were publishing their output.

“The first nine or 10 stories I wrote didn’t click,” said Mr. Pierce. “Then I received a lucky break.

“I had been in the naval reserve during the war, so that I know a good deal of naval procedure and the language of the navy. One day I picked up a magazine In which there was a sea story with the navy as a setting.

“As I read it, I said to myself that here was something right down my alley, and if that was the kind of thing the editors of that particular magazine wanted, I could write it. I turned out a story and sent It to New York.

“It happened that as the editor of the magazine was reading my manuscript a naval officer, a friend of his, came into the office. The editor tossed the script to this officer and asked him his opinion.

“Men in certain trades and professions are very critical of stories dealing with their crafts, and the writer who tries to draw on his imagination for facts and atmosphere is likely to bring down on his head a storm of derisive letters. But when the naval officer read this story of mine he was pleased.

“It might not have been a particularly good story, but he was reading it with an eye for flaws in detail. When he found the language of the characters was authentic navy talk, and the method of abandoning ship, which I had described, was accurately detailed, he thought It was a great yarn. He told the editor so. The story sold, and I was able to turn out a series of them along the same lines.”

Seattle is a very advantageous place in which to live, for one who writes. To that city come the ships of the Orient, men from far places in the North, returning to civilization. There is a cattle country and a mountain country nearby. Fisheries, canneries, logging camps and timber locales all are available. The city is the home of persons who have lived through the Klondike days of Alaska.

When the writer is balked by some perilous piece of detail or atmosphere, he knows where he can get assistance, if he had made friends with the old-timers.

Mr. Pierce wrote a story in which a character was found frozen stiff squatting on his haunches in front of a fireplace, with his hands extended as if warming them at a blaze.

This scene brought a flood of letters, starting with one from a man who sarcastically averred that a freezing man would relax and fall over; that it was sheer impossibility that he should be frozen in the squatting position.

A loyal fan of Seth Ranger came to his rescue with an even more sarcastic letter. He enclosed a photograph of a man frozen while standing upright, and suggested to the writer that he “show this to that so-and-so who thinks he knows so much.” A Seattle friend of Mr. Pierce settled the matter for him. Jake the Musher, veteran of many trails, not only vouched for the accuracy of the frozen man detail, but also related similar instances out of his vast fund of experiences in the North.

The stumbling writer who fashions a line, then pauses to improve it, would be amazed to see Mr. Pierce at work. He usually makes but one draft of a story, turning it out at high speed, and shooting it, without revision, at the magazine for which it was “slanted.” There was a time, during an illness, when he talked his stories into a dictating machine, and depended upon a typist to transcribe them. It was difficult and discouraging, but because he had to do it, he kept at it until he could dictate as well as he could write.

Writing for the pulps is Mr. Pierce’s livelihood, but he is not content only to do that. He studies meanwhile, constantly striving for improvement; not trying to write literature, because the boundaries of literature are very vague and nobody living can say certainly what of the present day writing shall be called literature 100 years from now; but so long as folk are entertained by what he writes, striving to give them the best in the field.

• Download “Graduate of Redlands School 25 Years Ago Now Writes Scores of Stories Yearly for Magazines”
  (10 May 1932, San Bernardino Daily Sun)

Frederick L. Nebel, a member of the Black Mask school of pulpsters, penned a popular series about the vagabond pilots Gales and McGill—free-lances of the air, birdmen of fortune, the wildest brace of adventurers that ever came out of America. They were notorious on the coast, known from Shanghai to Surabaya for a brace of wild, reckless adventurers, ripe at all times for anything short of murder.

Frederick L. Nebel, author of the Gales and McGill stories, says of his partners of the skies:

“Gales and McGill have flown before in Air Stories, and I know they’ll fly some more. I like Gales and McGill. They’ve sort of become friends of mine.

“I don’t have to tell you that McGill is a pretty hard-boiled egg. Nor is Gales particularly soft-boiled. But what one lacks, the other has, and, taking them together, they’re no boobs.

“McGill has no tact. He’s a wild hombre and will haul off and pop a fellow on the slightest provocation. Gales, on the other hand, has tact. He can sock, too, but he has a level head and a lot of canny stuff inside of it. And, of course, a lot of his time is spent getting McGill out of trouble.

“However, the main thing is that they play the game. They’re soldiers of fortune out to make the money and take the chances. But they play the game. There’s no double-crossing, and they don’t hire out as murderers.

“And so they zoom in “Sky-High Nerve,” an episode of their fortune hunting in the East. In all their flights they’re Gales and McGill; McGill reckless, Gales planning, both fighting. That motive is behind “Sky-High Nerve” and behind every flight they make. At least I try to make it that.

“Surely you’ve met guys like ‘em somewhere, some time.”

From the pages of the February 1928 number of Air Stories, it’s Gales & McGill in “Sky-High Nerve!”

Gales and McGill, free lances of the air, seek adventure—and get rapid-fire action as Gales plays out his hand against the sinister menace of the Tong. Another smashing Gales-McGill yarn!

• Download “Sky High Nerve” (February 1928, Air Stories)

THIS week we have another of Raoul Whitfield’s ‘Buck’ Kent stories from the pages of Air Trails magazine. Whitfield is primarily known for his hardboiled crime fiction published in the pages of Black Mask, but he was equally adept at lighter fair that might run in the pages of Breezy Stories. ‘Buck’ Kent, along with his pal Lou Parrish, is an adventurous pilot for hire. These stories, although more in the juvenile fiction vein, do feature some elements of his harder prose.

In the December 1928 issue of Air Trails, ‘Buck’ and his pal Lou find themselves in Mississippi down along the Gulf of Mexico low on fuel and looking for a place to land in their two-place plane. Before long they find themselves embroiled in local carnival politics and trying to rescue a girl doing a trapeze act from a hot air balloon that is about to be ripped apart by an approaching tornado!

A balloon broken loose—a Mississippi tornado! Buck Kent and Lou Parrish find perilous action.

• Download “Sky Lines” (December 1928, Air Trails)

MARCH is Mosquito Month! We’re celebrating Ralph Oppenheim and his greatest creation—The Three Mosquitoes! We’ll be featuring three early tales of the Mosquitoes over the next few Fridays as well as looking at Mr. Oppenheim’s pre-pulp writings. So, let’s get things rolling, as the Mosquitoes like to say as they get into action—“Let’s Go!”

The greatest fighting war-birds on the Western Front are once again roaring into action. The three Spads flying in a V formation so precise that they seemed as one. On their trim khaki fuselages, were three identical insignias—each a huge, black-painted picture of a grim-looking mosquito. In the cockpits sat the reckless, inseparable trio known as the “Three Mosquitoes.” Captain Kirby, their impetuous young leader, always flying point. On his right, “Shorty” Carn, the mild-eyed, corpulent little Mosquito, who loved his sleep. And on Kirby’s left, completing the V, the eldest and wisest of the trio—long-faced and taciturn Travis.

Let’s get things rolling with a tale from the pages of the December 24th, 1928 issue of War Birds.
London is being mercilessly bombed night after night by some unseen craft. The Three Mosquitoes are called in to find out what is bombing London and how they have managed to do this without being seen. It’s a puzzling mystery that Kirby manages to unravel when he finds unwittingly finds himself a stowaway on “The Phantom Zeppelin.”

London was being mysteriously bombed by this “Phantom.” Forty miles within the German lines winged the famous Kirby. He was on the trail of the invisible raider.

• Download “The Phantom Zeppelin” (December 24, 1928, War Birds)

And check back next Friday when the inseparable trio will be back with another exciting adventure!

This month we’re celebrating the talents of that pulp stalwart—Joe Archibald. Joe had quite the string of jobs that led him to the pulps. Born in 1898, Joe began his writing career at the age of fifteen with a prize-winning contribution to the Boston Post. At the age of twelve he submitted and sold his first cartoon to the original JUDGE Magazine. He is a graduate of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

During World War I he served on a sub-chaser for the United States Navy and was staff cartoonist for a service publication. After the armistice, he was a police and sports reporter for Boston Newspapers, and then went to New York and became a sports and panel cartoonist for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.

In 1928 he created his first comic strip syndicated by the New York Evening Graphic. Here he had characters, continuity and action. What he came up with was “Saga of Steve West,” a strip about a young man who leaves the farm and heads to the big city to find his way in life. The principle characters are: Steve West, the young man in question who appears to be in his late teens or early twenties; George Edwards who is Steve’s friend and benefactor and—a bootlegger; Edwards’ secretary and sometimes girlfriend, Helen Wyatt, who has a secret warm spot in her heart for Steve; Detective Gaffney who has matched wits with Edwards in gangland; and rounding out the main cast is Steve’s pal Pete Collins.

Beginning on November 12the 1928, the strip ran for almost a year according to Stripper’s Guide—ending its run in late September or early October 1929.

Here’s a taste of what was going on the first week of March 1929. As we join the action, Pete has been hi-jacked while driving one of George Edwards’ trucks. The truck stolen and shot through the shoulder, Pete has managed to make his way to not so nearby farmhouse three miles away where he was cared for and able to contact Edwards and Steve who have shown up to help hide him from “Red” and “The Greek.”

Strips courtesy of The Daily News of Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania.

To find out what happens next. . .

• Download “Saga of Steve West” (March 5 to April 2, 1929)

This month we’re celebrating the talents of that pulp stalwart—Joe Archibald. Archibald was not only a prolific author, but a decent artist as well illustrating many of his stories. His Phineas Pinkham tales from Flying Aces are an excellent example. So it’s no surprise that he had a past as a cartoonist working primarily with the McClure Syndicate.

During his time with McClure Syndicate, Joe Archibald produced a number of strips. We saw his “Champions Past and Present” from 1925 yesterday. Today we have a sports panel he produced that covered any topic related to sports under the sun—and they were varied.

Here are a few examples from February 1928 from the pages of the Lebanon Daily News, Lebanon Pensylvania.

Their familiar war cry rings out—“Let’s Go!” The greatest fighting war-birds on the Western Front are once again roaring into action. The three Spads flying in a V formation so precise that they seemed as one. On their trim khaki fuselages, were three identical insignias—each a huge, black-painted picture of a grim-looking mosquito. In the cockpits sat the reckless, inseparable trio known as the “Three Mosquitoes.” Captain Kirby, their impetuous young leader, always flying point. On his right, “Shorty” Carn, the mild-eyed, corpulent little Mosquito, who loved his sleep. And on Kirby’s left, completing the V, the eldest and wisest of the trio—long-faced and taciturn Travis.

Were back with the second of three Three Mosquitoes stories we’re presenting this month. This week Kirby is tasked with flying a spy over the lines who as is usually the case, actually a german spy masquerading as a G-2 agent. When Shorty Carn and Travis realize what has happened, will they be able to reach Kirby in time? Find out in Ralph Oppenheim’s “Passengers of Death” originally published in the September 27th, 1928 issue of War Stories!

Up in the air headed Kirby’s Bristol, bound on that ticklish job of reconnoitering with an Intelligence man in the rear cockpit. Straight for enemy territory they streaked. And little did Kirby know that his two companions of that invincible trio, the Three Mosquitoes, were following madly behind to warn him of— Would they make it? There was something queer about that Intelligence man.

• Download “Passengers of Death” (September 27, 1928, War Stories)

THROUGH the dark night sky, streaking swiftly with their Hisso engines thundering, is the greatest trio of aces on the Western Front—the famous and inseparable “Three Mosquitoes,” the mightiest flying combination that had ever blazed its way through overwhelming odds and laughed to tell of it! Flying in a V formation—at point was Captain Kirby, impetuous young leader of the great trio; on his right was little Lieutenant “Shorty” Carn, the mild-eyed, corpulent little Mosquito and lanky Lieutenant Travis, eldest and wisest of the Mosquitoes on his left!

Yes! The Three Mosquitoes, and to help get through the cold winter months, at Age of Aces dot net it’s Mosquito Month! We’ll be featuring that wiley trio in three early tales from the Western Front. This week we have the classic “Two Aces ~ and a Joker” in which Kirby takes on a lone enemy plane while returning from a mission. The two crash and Kirby and the Boche flyer strike up an uneasy truce until they find out which side of the lines they are on and who is whose prisoner!

Kirby, leader of the famous “Three Mosquitoes,” knew that he was too worn out to jump into another fight. He must get his plane back to the drome. But that lone Fokker that appeared suddenly below him looked too easy to miss—it was a cinch! He dived, with motor roaring, but it wasn’t such a cinch——

• Download “Two Aces ~ and a Joker” (June 1928, War Birds)

If you enjoyed this tale of our intrepid trio, check out some of the other stories of The Three Mosquitoes we have posted by clicking the Three Mosquitoes tag or check out one of the three volumes we’ve published on our books page! And come back next Friday or another exciting tale.

In this early Three Mosquitoes story, Kirby, Shorty, and Travis take on a German staffel who ambush helpless Allied observation flights, but run when confronted by any fighter craft. The Mosquitoes’ C.O. comes up with a wild solution to trap the cowardly Boche.

• Download “Q-Boat of the Air” (December 1928, War Birds)

Here is another early adventure of The Three Mosquitoes by Ralph Oppenheim. This one tells the story of the Mosquitoes daring raid deep behind the lines to rescue an Allied spy.

• Download “Roaring Motors” (May 24, 1928, War Stories)

Another exciting Three Mosquitoes adventure!
Out went the bombing squadron into that shell-filled night—straight for the enemy drome. It was against orders, but the famous “Three Mosquitoes” followed in swift pursuit, led by the daring Kirby. Suddenly, they found themselves headed right into a large Boche formation…

• Download “Hawks of the Night” (March 15, 1928, War Stories)