THIS week we have story of air intrigue by E.W. Chess. Elliot W. Chess was a prominent author in the pulps—his name frequently appearing on the covers to entice readers. His pulp career spanned from 1929 to 1940, but a majority of his output was in the early thirties. Equally adept at both westerns having grown up in El Paso, Texas and air war stories having served in the Royal Flying Corp in the First World War and the 7th Squadron of the Polish Air Force afterward when Russians tried to invade the country. Here, Chess tells a tale of a “Doomed Squadron” whose pilots are mysteriously disappearing one by one. . . .

Thirty-four pilots gone—one by one they screamed to their death, and not a Hun in the sky! And each one that was found had bitten off the end of his tongue . . . . What was the terrible force operating on the Doomed Sguadron?

From the pages of Eagles of the Air, it’s “The Doomed Squadron” by E.W. Chess!

• Download “The Doomed Squadron” (February 1930, Eagles of the Air)

If you haven’t check it out, Pulpflakes posted an excellent post about the life of “Elliot Chess—Fighter pilot, Author” last year.

THIS week we have a story by a new writer to this site, Wallace R. Bamber.

Wallace Rugene Bamber was born in 1895 in Tacoma. A veteran of the First World War, serving in the A.E.F. from 1917-19, during the 20’s he lived in New York City and became a well-known writer of air fiction for pulp magazines. Later he branched out as an editor and publisher of the short-lived Far East Adventure, a fiction magazine of the Orient with a dozen issues from 1930-32, and Amazing Detective Stories with five issues published in 1931. Later he became a traveling representative of the American Fiction guild, and moved to Seattle. He was with the federal writers’ project there, and later a WPA administrative staff official. Bamber also worked for a time as editor of the Port Orchard Independent, and was active in Democratic party affairs. A newspaperman at heart, in 1944 he started publication of a weekly paper, The Bainbridge Merchant, on Bainbridge island where he was then residing, but illness forced him to curtail this venture after two issues. He passed away in November of that year.

From the February 1930 issue of the short lived Flight, we have Bamber’s “Send Him up with Saunders.”

The C.O. kept Sanders as a free lance, for more than one reason perhaps. But mainly, no doubt, because there were other observers who could do the regular air work as well or better than Sanders could, while none of them could do the special work that he did. He had one exceptional quality that all the others observers lacked—He could tell a good pilot from a poor one far sooner than the commanding officer, himself, could. When a new pilot came up to the squadron, the first thing the C.O. would say to the operations officer, was: “Send him up with Sanders.”

When a new pilot came up to the Squadron the C.O. said “Send him up with Sanders”—and Sanders never failed to know at once a good pilot from a bad one. And no one knew his method!

• Download “Send Him Up with Sanders” (February 1930, Flight)

As a bonus, here’s an article from THE OREGONIAN where Mr. Bamber discusses what he sees as the state of Pulp fiction writing from February 17, 1931:

FREE-LANCE writers who are getting nothing but rejection slips should take heart because 1931 probably will not be such a tough year in the fiction market as 1930 was and the chances are that 1932 will be pretty good. This is the advice brought from New York by Wallace R. Bamber, publisher of Far East Adventure Stories and Amazing Detective Stories. Mr. Bamber was in Portland yesterday after a brief visit to Spokane, where he grew up and started writing. Speaking of pulp-paper fiction, Mr. Bamber said that, gangster stories now are in most demand, with half a dozen magazines publishing nothing else, and a number of others using this type of story generously. War stories, he said, are now almost unsalable, and the detective Story market, is on the wane after enjoying tremendous popularity. As to what will succeed the gangster story in vogue, “I wish I knew,” he said.

In pulp fiction there are only three kinds of stories, according to Mr. Bamber—love, detective mystery, and adventure. The gangster story is in the adventure, not detective field. In each of these divisions there are three kind’s of conflict—man against man, man against himself, and man against nature.

Furthermore, according to Mr. Bamber, there is only on® plot with which the pulp-paper writer need concern himself. The story opens, figuratively speaking, with the villain on top of the hero with a knife in his hand, and ends with the positions reversed. This one plot can be varied to suit any pulp magazine, the individuality of the story depending upon the characters used and the incidents employed in effecting the reversal of positions.

The magazine publishing business is largely a gamble, in Mr. Bamber’s view, and this is the reason so many pulp publications start and stop abruptly.

• Download “Fiction Field Better” (February 17, 1931, The Oregonian)

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)

THIS week we present a cover by Arnold Lorne Hicks! Hicks worked in the pulps primarily from the late ’20’s to the mid 30’s, producing covers for such magazines as North-West Stories, Navy Stories, Police Stories, Detective Dragnet, Sky Birds, Golden West, Western Trails, Love Adventures, and a couple covers for Flying Aces!

Sky Mirage

BELIEVE it or not, but many an airman on the Western Front got the fright of his young life by the mid-summer mirages that appeared every so often in the cloud-banked skies during the World War.

This month, our artist has depicted the phenomenon vividly on the front cover. The pilot, flying alongside of a bank of clouds with the sun off to his left, has suddenly turned to find another machine, of the same type, flying alongside him.

Many a pilot has been fooled by this mirage, and has waved in recognition, believing the ship to be another of his own squadron. Naturally, the other pilot has waved back. This sort of thing goes on sometimes until the pilot finally notices the aura of the rainbow colors circling the other ship. Then, and then only, does he realize that the other ship is nothing but a mirage—or a reflection of his own plane.

A pilot on the Western Front, in an effort to elude a flock of Fokkers, attempted to fly into a cloud bank, under the mirage conditions. He almost fell out of his cockpit attempting to get out of the way of another ship that appeared to be flying directly at him. He ducked to one side, and saw the other ship do the same. For a few minutes, he flew alongside this strange ship, and wondered why the other pilot acted so strangely. Again he tried to turn in, and the other ship heeled over toward him and apparently tried to ram him.

The poor mystified pilot swore and raged. The Fokkers were coming down on him like spitting vultures. There was nothing to do but take a chance and go it cold. Into the cloud he turned again, and decided to make the other ship pull out. Imagine his amazement when the other ship disappeared completely!

For several minutes he wondered what had happened, or whether he was seeing things, and then he suddenly remembered the story of sky mirages that other pilots of his squadron had talked about, back in the mess. But by that time, he was a pretty scared peelot. When he got back to his airdrome, he lost no time in telling the boys of his experience.

“Whenever you get into a mess like that,” advised the major, “look for the colored aura that always encircles the other plane. It is the same rainbow effect that you see in spray from a fountain or waterfall, when the sun strikes it at a certain angle to your vision. The reason it disappeared was because you had flown in so close to the cloud that you no longer were in the angle of vision to see it.”

Talk about your phantom planes! There were plenty of them out there when the sun shone right.

Sky Mirage
Flying Aces, December 1930 by Arnold Lorne Hicks

THIS week we present another cover by Arnold Lorne Hicks! Hicks worked in the pulps primarily from the late ’20’s to the mid 30’s, producing covers for such magazines as North-West Stories, Navy Stories, Police Stories, Detective Dragnet, Sky Birds, Golden West, Western Trails, Love Adventures, and a couple covers for Flying Aces!

“Lifeline!”

THIS month’s cover shows a daring rescue of a Yank airman by a fellow flyer. Seeing his buddy going down in a flaming plane, the flyer swoops down and throws a knotted rope to the Yank. He grabs it, and is shown in the act of pulling himself up from his blazing crate toward the rescuing plane.

“Lifeline!”
Flying Aces, November 1930 by Arnold Lorne Hicks

THIS week we present another cover by Arnold Lorne Hicks! Hicks worked in the pulps primarily from the late ’20’s to the mid 30’s, producing covers for such magazines as North-West Stories, Navy Stories, Police Stories, Detective Dragnet, Sky Birds, Golden West, Western Trails, Love Adventures, and a couple covers for Flying Aces!

“Beware of the Heinie in the sun!”

THIS month’s cover shows you the reason for that warning phrase heard in every Allied airdrome during the war—”Beware of the Heinie in the sun!” German flyers had a habit of hiding in the sun, so that Allied airmen could not see them until they were ready to swoop down with machine guns blazing. In our cover, the Yank pilot has just caught sight of tho German plane silhouetted against the sun. Vickers will soon be trading tracers with Spandaus.

“Beware of the Heinie in the sun!”
Flying Aces, October 1930 by Arnold Lorne Hicks

THIS week we present another great cover by J.W. Scott. You may recall we featured his brilliant covers for Sky Devils a couple years ago. This time is a cover he rendered for Flying Aces! Scott painted covers for all kinds of magazines—from aviation to science fiction; from the uncanny to the Wild West; from detective stories to Woman’s Day. Here, for the September 1930 issue of Flying Aces he depicts the daring rescue of a flyer whose plane has caught fire!

A Fiery Rescue

A TENSE dramatic moment is pictured in this month’s cover—the daring rescue of a Yank flyer by his buddy. In the dogfight which has just taken place, the gas tank in the Yank’s plane was punctured by Spandau bullets, and his plane caught fire. As the flames spread, threatening to envelope his body and send him down in a fiery dive of death, another American plane swooped down. In it was his buddy. Almost on top of the burning plane he came, and near enough so that the other Yank could grasp his landing gear and pull himself up—to safety.

A Fiery Rescue
Flying Aces, September 1930 by J.W. Scott

THIS week we have a story from the pen of Donald E. Keyhoe—his first in the pages of Flying Aces magazine, which ran a story by Keyhoe in most of their issue from January 1930 through September 1942, featuring characters like Richard Knight, Eric Trent or Captain Philip Strange! Before Keyhoe started up the series characters, he wrote other stories of then present day aviation situations. “Air Crimes, Limited” outlines how a massive criminal ring is using airplanes on a big scale for various crooked schemes. Captain Jack Collins of the Air Corp is tasked with infiltrating this organization and getting information that can be used to bring the organization down.

From the pages of the January 1930 issue of Flying Aces it’s Donald E. Keyhoe’s “Air Crimes, Limited!”

A mysterious message from the Chief of the Flying Corps—an organization of master air criminals—red-hot gangster guns—furious breathtaking cloud battles—all woven into a smashing sky yarn by a pilot writer whose articles on aviation are famous!

• Download “Air Crimes, Limited” (January 1930, Flying Aces)

THIS week we have a story from the pen of the Navy’s own Allan R. Bosworth. Bosworth wrote a couple dozen stories with Humpy & Tex over the course of ten years from 1930 through 1939, mostly in the pages of War Aces and War Birds. The stories are centered around the naval air base at Ile Tudy, France. “Humpy” Campbell, a short thickset boatswain’s mate, first class who was prone to be spitting great sopping globs of tabacco juice, was a veteran seaplane pilot who would soon rate two hashmarks—his observer, Tex Malone, boatswain’s mate, second class, was a D.O.W. man fresh from the Texas Panhandle. Everybody marveled at the fact that the latter had made one of the navy’s most difficult ratings almost overnight—but the answer lay in his ability with the omnipresent rope he constantly carried.

Caught in a sudden squall, Humpy & Tex find themselves down in the ocean and starting to sink! Their rescue puts them smack in the middle of a German plot to blow up the port at St. Nazaire. They may be down, but they’re not “Washed Out!” By the Navy’s own Allan R. Bosworth from the pages of the December 1930 War Aces.

One of them chewed tobacco and the other sang, but it wasn’t until they were pulled over the side of that mystery ship that Humpy and Tex sang “Hallelujah, I’m a bum.”

• Download “Washed Out” (December 1930, War Aces)

THIS week we have an early cover by Frederick Blakeslee for Flying Aces. Blakeslee did three covers for Flying Aces in 1930. The one below for the August issue of that year was his third and final cover for the magazine.

The Story Behind the Cover

BRITISH against German—S.E.5 against Fokker—that’s the struggle depicted in this month’s cover. The S.E.5 has taken a long dive and is raking the Fokker from wing tip to cockpit. In this particular bit of action, the German was wounded in the legs, and with great difficulty escaped to his own lines.

Planes of the S.E.5 type appeared in France during the winter of 1917-1918. The German Fokker D7 was the only ship at the Front superior to the S.E.5—and our cover shows that the Fokker did not always win!

“S.E.5 vs Fokker D7”
Flying Aces, August 1930 by Frederick Blakeslee

THIS week we have another exciting air adventure with Rusty Wade from the pen of Frank Richardson Pierce. 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.

Each year Rusty Wade promised himself a real, old-fashioned Christmas, and each year Fate decreed that he be riding high in the air, eating cold sandwiches instead of thrusting his long legs under a table groaning with turkey and the other good things that went with a Christmas dinner. But this year he was determined to have just that with Mary Heath—the prettiest teacher in the whole Yukon country. Until that faked distress call came in from the ice bound Ellen Dow. From the pages of the January 1930 Air Trails, it’s Christmas in July with Rusty Wade in Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Frozen Wings!”

“Hawk” Breed was out to beat him; but “Rusty” Wade made a dare-devil’s landing and pledged himself to play a desperate game!

• Download “Frozen Wings” (January 1930, Air Trails)

THIS week we have a story by the prolific O.B. Myer’s! Myers was a pilot himself, flying with the 147th Aero Squadron and carrying two credited victories and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

The 77th had seven Aces in their squadron. There had never been an outfit with more than nine Aces in it. If the 77th were to have ten Aces—the whole gang would get a three-day leave in Paris, to celebrate. Billy Preston only had one victory under his belt when he was determined to be that tenth Ace by any means possible. From the August 1930 Sky Birds, it’s O.B. Myer’s “The Ace Ship!”

Billy Preston needed only one more plane to make him an ace, and the 77th needed just one more ace. But Spandau bullets carried his number—in that grim battle with the green-diamond Fokker.

• Download “The Ace Ship” (August 1930, Sky Birds)

For all his many published stories, O.B. Myer’s didn’t really have any series characters. The few recurring characters he did have in the pages of Dare-Devil Aces, we’ve collected into a book we like to call “The Black Sheep of Belogue: The Best of O.B. Myers” which collects the two Dynamite Pike and his band of outlaw Aces stories and the handful of Clipper Stark vs the Mongol Ace tales. If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love these stories!

THIS week we have a story from a author new to Age of Aces—Andrew A. Caffrey. Caffrey, who was in the American Air Service in France during The Great War, was a prolific author of aviation and adventure stories for both the pulps and slicks from the late 1920’s through 1950. In “Flying Odds,” Caffrey gives us a taut tale of Lieutenant Wood trying to get as far back to allied territory as possible when the engine of his Spad conks out.

From the January 1930 issue of Sky Birds—

Lieutenant Wood’s engine was hot, but the Huns who tried to force that crate-busting fool out of the sky found that Lieutenant Wood was “hot stuff” too.

• Download “Flying Odds” (January 1930, Sky Birds)

“HAW-W-W-W-W!” That sound can only mean one thing—that Bachelor of Artifice, Knight of Calamity and an alumnus of Doctor Merlin’s Camelot College for Conjurors is back to vex not only the Germans, but the Americans—the Ninth Pursuit Squadron in particular—as well. Yes it’s the marvel from Boonetown, Iowa himself—Lieutenant Phineas Pinkham!

We’re back to Pinkham’s exploits in The Great Guerre, but this time we’re going all the way back to the first appearance of Phineas Pinkham—to the day he first showed his homely mug at the Ninth Pursuit Squadron where they were being bedeviled by Baron von Kohl and his sky circus! From the November 1930 Flying Aces, it’s Joe Archibald’s “Sneeze That Off!” introducing Phineas Carbuncle Pinkham from Boonetown, Iowa!

He liked to play with rubber cigars, phony bombs, and sneeze powder—did Phineas Carbuncle Pinkham, that thorn in the flesh of the American Ninth Pursuit. Their only hope was that von Kohl, the German sky terror who never missed a man, would be a big help to them, after all!

• Download “Sneeze That Off!” (November 1930, Flying Aces)

THIS week we have an early story from the pen of Donald E. Keyhoe—his first in the pages of Sky Birds magazine. Keyhoe started appearing regularly in the aviation pulps—Wings, Air Stories, Sky Birds, Flying Aces—starting in December 1929. His series characters started in August 1931.

“The Flying Fool” from March 1930 tells the tale of a pilot who has to hide his love of stunting about to keep his job—that is until a motion picture company comes to town and their head trick flyer is injured…

Even the five surviving Devils of the Double Eagle were doomed to die. and death-defying stunts showed them how a master pilot answers a taunting accusation!

• Download “The Flying Fool” (March 1930, Sky Birds)