THIS week we present a cover by Colcord Heurlin! Heurlin worked in the pulps primarily over a ten year period from 1923 to 1933. His work appeared on Adventure, Aces, Complete Stories, Everybody’s Combined with Romance, North-West Stories, The Popular, Short Stories, Sky Birds, Sea Stories, Top-Notch, War Stories, Western Story, and here, the cover of the May 1931 Flying Aces!

Over Germany—1915

SUCH a scene as that depicted on our cover this month could have happened only in the early part of the war. For the French bomber whose pilot you see sending a Boche plane down in flames while his observer drops missiles of death on German terrain is an old pusher-type Salmson that went out of use in 1915. At that time, the Fokker stormed the Front with a new type of machine gun that fired through the propeller, and this Salmson was too heavy and slow to compete. It had had its day of glory, however, for it was one of the earliest ships that were really battle-planes, in which the pilot and observer were protected by a metal-covered nacelle.

“Over Germany—1915”
Flying Aces, May 1931 by C. Heurlin

“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!

Phineas is jumped by a couple Boche Fokkers and sent crashing into a tree all while a pair of British Bristols idly fly by watching, but not helping in the least. When Phineas tries to get to the bottom of the British flyers’ lack of assistance it could all blow up into a Royal Scandal! From the August 1931 Flying Aces, it’s Phineas Pinkham in Joe Archibald’s “Tell It to the King!”

It was all the fault of the Limeys that his Spad was smeared against the side of a tree and he himself looked like the target in a knife-throwing contest. And if you think he let the matter rest right there—well, you don’t know Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham!

• Download “Tell It to the King!” (August 1931, Flying Aces)

“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!

When Phineas’ joke on Colonel Guilfoyle gets the Old Man in trouble, he concocts an elaborate plan to try and get Garrity and the Ninth Pursuit Squadron off the hook. From the July 1931 Flying Aces, it’s Joe Archibald’s “Bargains fro Blois!”

It was a dastardly trick! On account of it, Colonel Guilfoyle, G.H.Q.’s weightiest chair-warmer, threatened to bust the Old Man. Somehow connected with it was the Old Man’s promise to make a spark plug-cleaner out of Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham. And we don’t blame either of them–do you?

• Download “Bargains for Blois” (July 1931, Flying Aces)

“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!

The Jerries thought themselves lucky, when Lieutenant Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham crashed within their lines. But that was before they were acquainted with this ace of practical jokers. Poor Fritz!

• Download “Rock-a-Bye Jerry” (June 1931, Flying Aces)

“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!

Following up on Phineas Carbuncle Pinkham’s introduction to the Ninth Pursuit Squadron and The Great Guerre, this month we have Pinkham’s second escapade from the February 1931 Flying Aces. Here, the Boonetown Ace inadvertently sparks a feud between the Ninth and their new neighbors—a French Squadron at Soirry Wood 20 ships and DeHavalind bombers would help them wreck Manheim’s Flying Circus and reclaim the air! Phineas turns to history for a lesson on how to win back the French when he puts on a little show as “The Hardware Ace!”

The C.O. should have known better. It was a friendly relations dinner for the new Frog squadron in that sector—and the Skipper let Phineas Carbuncle Pinkham come to the party!

• Download “The Hardware Ace” (February 1931, Flying Aces)

THIS week we have a story from the pen of a prolific pulp author O.B. Myers! Myers was a pilot himself, flying with the 147th Aero Squadron and carrying two credited victories and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

A prank against their commanding officer turns into deadly mission of life or death when the pilots of the 66th must retrieve their Commander’s fancy Paris tailored uniform they tossed in No-Man’s-Land to keep important information in a letter in the pockets from falling into German hands! From the October 1931 issue of Flying Aces, it’s O.B. Myer’s “No Man’s Sky!”

The order was filled out and ready—to send one flyer of the 66th to Blois in disgrace.
And the only thing that could keep Lieutenant Linkener’s name from that order
was to bring back a letter that lay in the middle of No-Man’s-Land!

• Download “No Man’s Sky” (October 1931, Flying Aces)

THIS week we have an early story from the prolific pen of Mr. Robert J. Hogan—the author of The Red Falcon and Smoke Wade as well as G-8 and his Battle Aces! Herre, Hogan gives us the story of young Dexter, pilot of a D.H. bomber who knows his own pride is getting in the way of accepting some much needed advice from his more experienced observer/bomber. He knew Death was reaching for him and he fought frantically to control himself. from the September 1931 issue of War Aces it’s Robert J. Hogan’s “The Action Hunter!”

To the deadliest of slaughter missions lumbered that rookie bomber, and only in the ashen face of The Reaper did that kiwi see the stuff of which men are made.

• Download “The Action Hunter” (September 1931, War Aces)

THIS week we have a story by Joel Townsley Rogers. Born in 1896 and studied at Harvard, Rogers saw The Great War as an adventure and joined the Navy Air Corp and became one of it’s first few hundred pilots. Unfortunately, the war ended before he saw action and ended up as a flight instructor at Pensacola instead. After the war, he turned his experiences into stories for the pulps. In addition to air stories, Rogers also wrote numerous mystery and science-fiction stories as well.

Zep-strafer extraordinaire, Kenny Blair of the 19th Camels and Captain of the dreaded Gallows Birds, Anton Glick—Two Aces, mortal enemies in the air, find themselves both marooned on an ever-shrinking sandbar in the sea.

Two aces flew to the edge of the world, one toying with treason, one fighting for life in a circle of death. Two aces, two bullets—and only one plane to break a deadlock of doom!

• Download “Lost Aces” (November 1931, Aces)

For more info on Rogers, check out “Joel Townsley Rogers—Fiction House Ace” over at the PulpFest website!

THIS Holiday Season we’re delving into a pair of scrapbooks that were created in the late 20’s and early 30’s by an industrious youth, Robert A. O’Neil, with a keen interest in all things aviation. The books contain clippings, photos and articles from various aviation pulps as well as other magazines. What has been assembled is a treasure trove of information on planes and aces of WWI.

Like many in the late 20’s and early 30’s, Robert O’Neil was fascinated with aviation and as such, a large part of both volumes of his scrapbooks is taken up with a cataloging of the many different types of planes. But amongst all the planes and air race flyers and info on Aces are some surprising items.

Turning the page, we find two acknowledgments that had been sent out for having written a letter in to the pulps!

The first, from Battle Aces, is an actual postcard mailed on March 28th 1931 at 7:30pm from the Grand Central Annex branch of the post office. It pictures Sarge and a happy plane dancing about and reads:

“SAY, YOU! Thanks for the swell letter! Yours for happy landing,
—Editor Battle Aces”

but upon it, Sarge has written Robert a handwritten note that reads:

“Never mind that ride with my blonde Jane, Bob.
She goes sky bugging with yours truly only!
Gene”

The second is from War Birds magazine. Unlike the Battle Aces card, this is not a postcard, just a slip of paper and was most likely sent in an envelope. It pictures that “same hard boiled, son-o’a gun, Sarge” reading letters while being flown about and says simply: “Thanks for your Letter!”

Yes, it’s the same Sarge, well…. Depending when the card was sent. Eugene A. Clancy was the editor of War Birds magazine from 1928 to whenever he left in 1930 to take over duties at Battle Aces. The letters column over there was full of all the same things—except the Prince of Zanzibar and a big Swede are his cohorts in his escapades. Aside from that, he’s still going down to Mike’s Place and the Blonde Jane is still helping out. His replacement carried on as Sarge, but it’s obvious it’s not the same Sarge.

THIS Holiday Season we’re delving into a pair of scrapbooks that were created in the late 20’s and early 30’s by an industrious youth, Robert A. O’Neil, with a keen interest in all things aviation. The books contain clippings, photos and articles from various aviation pulps as well as other magazines. What has been assembled is a treasure trove of information on planes and aces of WWI.

Like many in the late 20’s and early 30’s, Robert O’Neil was fascinated with aviation and as such, a large part of both volumes of his scrapbooks is taken up with a cataloging of the many different types of planes. But amongst all the planes and air race flyers and info on Aces are some surprising items. Robert was also fond of including cut-outs from covers of all kinds of aviation themed magazines.

Here are a few along with the full covers Robert excised them from:

AIR TRAILS August 1931

POPULAR AVIATION September 1931

MODEL AIRPLANE NEWS OCTOBER 1931

SKY BIRDS August 1931

SKY BIRDS MARCH 1932

SKY BIRDS APRIL 1932

NATIONAL GLIDER and AIRPLANE NEWS July 1931

BATTLE STORIES August 1931

FLYING ACES August 1931

BATTLE STORIES May 1931

ACES August 1931

THIS Holiday Season we’re delving into a pair of scrapbooks that were created in the late 20’s and early 30’s by an industrious youth, Robert A. O’Neil, with a keen interest in all things aviation. The books contain clippings, photos and articles from various aviation pulps as well as other magazines. What has been assembled is a treasure trove of information on planes and aces of WWI.

Like many in the late 20’s and early 30’s, Robert O’Neil was fascinated with aviation and as such, a large part of both volumes of his scrapbooks is taken up with a cataloging of the many different types of planes. But amongst all the planes and air race flyers and info on Aces are some surprising items.

Turning the page, we find another letter removed from its envelope and scrapbooked in. . .

Opening it, we find a letter from “Sarge” on the official Popular Publications letterhead. Sarge was the assumed character and nom de plum of Eugene A. Clancy that he used for answering letters sent into Battle Aces magazine’s letters column, The Hot Airdrome.

SARGE AND THE HOT AIRDROME

SARGE was a grizzled old war bird often found downing Iotas at Mike’s Place with his distinguished friend Colonel Houseboat, one of the most important unofficial diplomats of two continents when not in the “hanger” answering the reader’s questions and spinning tall tales of his misadventures. Those misadventures start to take on a life of their own from month to month and often involve the likes of Clarence Hip Lee, the well-known Chinese diplomat and representative of the great Chinese general One Lung Gut, Abdul Benny Smid, the former ex-sultan of Morocco, Issac O’Connor, the Swedish ace, and sometimes the authors of the stories from the magazine!

Battle Aces’ letters column, The Hot Airdrome, was the meeting place for The Iota Club. It was a club that was easy to join—one need only need to send in the coupon at the end of the letters column that asked you to list which stories you’d like to see more of as well as your name and address. Sarge had a secretary he often referred to as a “Blonde Jane” who assisted him in sorting through the coupons and pasting them down in the Iota Club Book. She was of Norwegian decent and was not of fan of Sarge’s terse language or his ham-handed advances.

From the outset, the Iota Club seem to be on it’s way to becoming a real card carrying club like other pulp clubs. Sarge would reference that he’d give the readers full particulars about the new Iota Club in the next issue (October 1930) or that he was working on getting cards—they “weren’t quite ready yet” in January 1931, but would be sent out when they were. But these teases were never followed up on and the Iota Club remained a place where—as they state at the start of the column—”the readers of BATTLE ACES gather every month to tell each other and the editor to go to hell—on wings.”

Sarge’s load of tall tales and abuse were doubled up when Popular Publications started up Dare-Devil Aces in February of 1932. Dare-Devil Aces’ letters page, The Hot Air Club, was more of the same with Sarge dishing up over there as well as he did at the Hot Airdrome. Eventhough Battle Aces folded with the December 1932 issue (to be reborn ten months later as G-8 and his Battle Aces) Sarge wasn’t idle, as The Bull Flight Club took off that month in Battle Birds.

Like all good things, The Bull Flight Club closed its hanger doors when Battle Birds ended in June 1934 and Nosedive Ginsberg took over the bull sessions over at the Hot Air Club in April 1936.

EUGENE A. CLANCY

EUGENE A. CLANCY, born in 1882, was a New York City native and graduate of St. Francis Xavier College. He started getting his stories published in 1910 in publications like Harper’s Magazine, Short Stories, Munsey’s Magazine, Lippincott’s Magazine, Snappy Stories, The Parisienne Monthly, Top-Notch, People’s Story Magazine, and Complete Story Magazine to name but a few. It’s estimated he wrote some 1500 stories over his career.

By 1926 he started editing various aviation and war magazines for Dell—War Stories, War Novels, War Birds, and Navy Stories, before Henry Steeger brought him along when he left to start Popular Publications where he put him in charge of Battle Aces right from the get go with the October 1930 issue. From there his editing duties increased with the addition of Dare-Devil Aces in February 1932 and later Battle Birds in December 1932.

During the Second World War he served as executive secretary of the Quincy Council of Social Agencies in Massachusetts. After the war he held the position of South Side correspondent for the Boston Herald-Traveler until he passed away on March 29th, 1952 at the age of 69.

A LETTER FROM SARGE

EUGENE CLANCY replies to Robert’s request to get a copy of the June 1931 issue of Battle Aces and possibly pictures of war planes in combat. Dated July 23rd, 1931:

Dear Robert:

    This is to acknowledge receipt of forty cents in stamps for the June issue of BATTLE ACES, which was sent out under separate cover by first class mail and you should have received it by this time.

    The best way for you to get framed pictures of war planes in combat would be to write to the Signal Corps in Washington for the pictures and then have them framed. The Signal Corps has a fairly complete list of photographs which they will send upon request and you can have them framed at any art dealer’s for about seventy five cents a piece.

    Now lissen’ Bozo—no wise cracks about the blond jane. You lay off or I’ll fly over your drome and drop a load of TNT on your neck.

    Hope you get as much kick out of reading the magazine as we do out of putting it together.

                              Yours for happy landings,

                              THE SARGE

Clancy signed the letter simply as “Gene.”

   

THIS Holiday Season we’re delving into a pair of scrapbooks that were created in the late 20’s and early 30’s by an industrious youth, Robert A. O’Neil, with a keen interest in all things aviation. The books contain clippings, photos and articles from various aviation pulps as well as other magazines. What has been assembled is a treasure trove of information on planes and aces of WWI.

Like many in the late 20’s and early 30’s, Robert O’Neil was fascinated with aviation and as such, a large part of both volumes of his scrapbooks is taken up with a cataloging of the many different types of planes. But amongst all the planes and air race flyers and info on Aces are some surprising items.

Turning the page, we find one of the Birdmen Club cards paired with the Sky Riders Club Card!

The Sky Riders magazine started in November 1928. A year later, in the November 1929 issue there was a brief mention in the magazine’s letters column, The Bung Bung, that they would be announcing details of a club in the subsequent issue. And sure enough, avid Sky Riders readers who had been pestering the editors for a club were granted their wish.

As the chief laid out the Sky Riders Club guidelines in the December 1929 issue:

First off, the name will be THE SKY RIDERS CLUB, and it will be open to all readers of the mag. But just being a reader of the mag is no free ticket for joining this new bunch of cloud-busters, not on your dizzy life.

The club will be divided into three squadrons. Squadron 1 includes those who have actually piloted a plane, and by piloting a plane, I don’t mean no dare-devil stunt like pushing the joystick around inside the hangar. To get into Squadron 1, the requirements are that you send in one coupon and a letter stating (a) why you are interested in aviation, and (b) one constructive idea that you have for the promotion of aviation.

Squadron 2 includes those who have been up in a plane, regardless of whether they have handled the joystick themselves or not. These members will be required to send in the coupon from two successive issues of the mag, together with the letter as explained above.

And Squadron 3 will include those modocs who have never been up in a plane, but are just feverish with the aerial itch. Membership in Squadron 3 will be given to these who send in the coupon from three successive issues of the mag and also the letter as outlined for members of Squadron 1.

If you are accepted into the club, you will receive a membership certificate, and the right to wear the silver wings of the outfit. The silver wings can be had by sending in fifty cents, but this is not a commercial organization and will make no money. As a matter of fact, there will be various contests in the future with prizes awarded to the winners. But I’m going to wait until the next issue before I get all steamed up and fiery about what this nose-diving club is going to do.

>

It was announced in the March 1930 issue that the silver wings were just being made and would be sent to people starting the next month.

Robert was listed with the new members in the June 1930 issue.
(That’s the coupon at the bottom of the page.)

By the September 1930 issue, The Sky Riders Club had been combined with those members of the short lived Flying Corp Cadets which had been formed by readers of the first and sadly only issue of Clayton Magazine’s Sky High Library published in February 1930. The increase in new memberships allowed them to drop the price of the silver wings pin from 50¢ to 25¢ (September, 1930)

Sadly, Sky Riders published their final issue in May 1931.

The Club page from the February 1931 issue with angular wings logos for both the SKY RIDERS CLUB and FLYING CORP CADETS.

Robert had also joined the Flying Aces Club. The FAC is so ubiquitous, I thought it best to cover the two clubs cards we had not seen before. Plus, the FAC itself could fill a whole month of posts to cover all they had to offer. Here is a comparison of the four cards Robert included in the scrapbooks.

The FLYING ACES CLUB card measures: 2.5″ x 4″; the SKY RIDERS CLUB card is:
2.75″ x 4.5625″; while the BIRDMEN CLUB card measures: 3″ x 5.125″.

THIS Holiday Season we’re delving into a pair of scrapbooks that were created in the late 20’s and early 30’s by an industrious youth, Robert A. O’Neil, with a keen interest in all things aviation. The books contain clippings, photos and articles from various aviation pulps as well as other magazines. What has been assembled is a treasure trove of information on planes and aces of WWI.

Like many in the late 20’s and early 30’s, Robert O’Neil was fascinated with aviation and as such, a large part of both volumes of his scrapbooks is taken up with a cataloging of the many different types of planes. But amongst all the planes and air race flyers and info on Aces are some surprising items.

Turning the page from the George Bruce letter we find a membership card and folded note from the Birdmen club!

The Birdman Club was run by Air Trails and started right from their first issue in October 1928. It was a great brotherhood of those who roam the high spaces of the air, in either fact or fancy. It was for professional and amateur flyers, and air fans who have yet to make their first flight. All were banded together in the cause of American aviation.

It was not necessary to own a plane or to be actively engaged in some branch of aviation to join the club. The Birdmen band was divided into three classes. These were: Class A: those who have piloted planes; Class B: those who have been in the air but are not pilots; and Class C: those who have not yet been aloft, but who are interested in flying and expect to go up in an airplane at the first opportunity. Readers who were applying for membership were asked to state which class they would be in.

Membership in the Birdmen Club was absolutely free to all readers of Air Trails. Prospective members only had to fill out and send in the coupon from the Birdmen Club pages in any issue of Air Trails and their membership card would be sent to them.

For those who desired a Birdmen club emblem—a handsome blue-and-gold wings pin, could be obtained from the secretary for twenty-five cents in stamps or coin.

All Birdmen were afforded the same privileges regardless of their class. All members were welcome to write in and use the Birdmen Club pages to share stories and comments on those published in the magazine; the could list themselves as someone looking to be a pen pal to a like minded reader, or list stuff for sale or trade.

Unfolding the note…

The card is a very pale blue color. For some reason he had trimmed his card down—and did a poor job of it considering his razor like precision at cutting out other items he had pasted down.

Robert reapplied for membership in the Birdmen Club in 1931. I couldn’t say why. His class had not changed, he was still Class B. Maybe he felt poorly about butchering his original card so, who knows. Either way, he did reapply and was presented with another card in 1931.

At this time he received two letters from the Secretary of the Birdmen on Air Trails stationary which he also included in his scrapbook.

The first was the letter that came with his new card…

the other in response to inquiring about the blue-and-gold wings of the club.
(Sadly, he did not paste the wings into the scrapbooks.)

The Birdmen Club officially ran until the end of the magazine with the October 1931 issue. The Bill Barnes magazine assumed it’s place on the newsstand in February 1932 and it had it’s own club—The Air Adventurers!

THIS Holiday Season we’re delving into a pair of scrapbooks that were created in the late 20’s and early 30’s by an industrious youth, Robert A. O’Neil, with a keen interest in all things aviation. The books contain clippings, photos and articles from various aviation pulps as well as other magazines. What has been assembled is a treasure trove of information on planes and aces of WWI.

Like many in the late 20’s and early 30’s, Robert O’Neil was fascinated with aviation and as such, a large part of both volumes of his scrapbooks is taken up with a cataloging of the many different types of planes. In addition to Flying Aces’ “War Planes Album” and Sky Birds’ “Model Planes of All Nations”, Robert also featured Frederick Blakeslee’s magnificent Battle Aces covers.

The second scrapbook which features the March 1932 Battle Aces cover as it’s cover, starts off with a collection of Blakeslee’s covers. each speed features a full fresh-off-the-newsstand cover and the story behind the cover lovingly typed on the facing page. I don’t know why he didn’t just clip out the story page from the issue instead, although he did clip out Blakeslee’s pen and ink rendering of the featured cover plane on several pages of those images collaged together.

He does not have all the Blakeslee Battle Aces covers, but he does have a majority of them.

He included the picture of O.B. Myers with the write-up for the November 1931 cover which tells how O.B. got his D.S.C.

Similarly, he includes Wilbert Wallace White’s picture with Blakeslee’s cover about White. (January 1932)

Covers he includes are:

Jan ‘32	Feb ‘32	Mar ‘32
Apr ‘32	May ‘31	Jun ‘31
Jun ‘32	Jul ‘32	Jul ‘31
Aug ‘31	Sep ‘31	Oct ‘31
Nov ‘31	Dec ‘31	Dec ‘32

THIS week we have a story by H.P.S. Greene. Henry Paul Stevens Greene wrote aviation tales from the late 20’s to the early 40’s for magazines like Wings, Air Stories, Sky Fighters and, the magazine this story appeared in—Aces.

What little we know about Greene is from papers he left behind in a cardboard suitcase discovered in a storeroom at the National Press Club.

Greene was known by his colleagues at the National Press Club as the man who lived out of a suitcase, so it only seemed apt that he left his papers behind in a cardboard suitcase that was subsequently discovered in a storeroom of the National Press Club. The papers within the suitcase appear to be the only remaining information about H.P.S. Greene.

Henry Paul Stevens Greene was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 28, 1892, the son of Amy Bodwell Stevens and Henry Brooks Greene. (According to his own genealogical research, both the Bodwell and Stevens families were active in the American colonial and revolutionary periods.)

He graduated from Methuen (MA) High School and wrote the “Prophecy” for the class of 1911.

Greene was a member of the 1916 class of Amherst College but left in January of that year to join an ambulance unit in the French army.

His stories and reminiscences suggest that he may have joined the elite French flying unit, the Lafayette Escadrille, and later transferred to the American Air Service.

In August 1919, he received the Diploma of Honor of the Aerial League of America for his services in the First World War.

Greene wrote aviation tales from the late 20’s to the early 40’s for magazines like Wings, Air Stories, Sky Fighters, Flying Aces, and Aces.

Later on, while in residence at veteran’s hospitals in Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California, he wrote adventure tales of Mexico and the old West. Sadly, by the 1940’s rejection slips had become common in his correspondence.

He passed away in 1947.

In the suitcase, Greene had kept his correspondence and personal records, such as a genealogical survey, his “Prophesy” for his 1911 high school class, a college newspaper which mentions his World War I service, a diploma from the Aerial League of America, and his reminiscences. He also stored typescripts of his articles and novellas, and clipped copies of stories which had been published in the magazines likes Wings and Aces.

The articles consist largely of adventure stories of World War I: ambulance drivers and aviation aces. They appear to be drawn, in part, from the personal experiences of the author. The lack of his military record suggests, however, that they are embellished composites.

One long novelette, “A Child, an Old Woman, and a Cow,” is partially an autobiographical statement, detailing the experiences of ambulance drivers and aviators in the First World War and a character who undergoes treatment at a veteran’s hospital. It is also a fantasy which describes a decorated war hero and a successful aviation writer.

The materials from Greene’s suitcase have been archived at the National Press Club into two boxes and arranged in three series: personal files, typescripts, and printed material. Within the typescripts and printed materials, the articles are arranged alphabetically by title.

Spy Drome

A jinxed pilot, Lieutenant Hugo Von Blon, is cornered into taking the fall for his commanding officer’s indiscretion and spend the rest of the war as a prisoner of war or be cashiered out in disgrace. From the pages of the November 1931 Aces, it’s H.P.S. Greene’s “Spy Drome!”

Cornered by a fat little spy, a conspiring squadron commander and an M.S.E. who rigged the Spad for a crash, what could Von Blon do? His last landing was on a German field, hands in the air.

• Download “Spy Drome” (November 1931, Aces)

As a bonus, H.P.S. Greene provided some “believe-it-or-not” stories that were printed up in the letters column.

Behind “Spy Drome”

These lines from H.P.S. Greene lend additional interest to the tribulations of Von Blon, and provide fresh proof that strange things happened while the war was raging in the air. Two heroes figure in the incidents described by the author of “Spy Drome” in this issue.

A Boston bird, Gardiner Fiske, attached to the First Bombardment Group, A.E.F., at Maulan, just south of Verdun, fell out of a ship a few thousand feet up. Well, he grabbed the stabilizer as it went past and climbed back up the fuselage and into the cockpit again.

Tell you another? All right. This one’s about an observer with a British squadron—Number Twenty of the Royal Flying Corps. The observer was Captain J.H. Hedley, who at the close of the war had a score of twelve enemy planes and a balloon.

Twenty had arrived in France with Fees on January 23, 1916. Two years later, when the squadron was flying Bristol Fighters, Hedley pulled this same stunt of leaving his ship and coming back again. It happened one day in January, 1918.

The Bristol was flying over the lines way up, with more than eighteen thousand altitude. A black-crossed ship appeared ahead. Hedley, in the rear pit, swung his gun in an attempt to get the E.A. into his line of fire.

Now in the British service observers had begun without safety belts. And of course they had no parachutes. The observer was in the habit of tapping the pilot on the back of his head, thus signifying that the plane should dive.

The German was behind and above, diving zigzag wide open and gaining. His machine guns were sputtering bullets. Hedley was standing up facing back with his machine gun belching fire right back at his opponent. The German suddenly zoomed right down on the Englishman and then pulled almost straight up, evidently preparing to loop and take another dive on them.

When the German took his last zoom and pulled up, Hedley tried to follow him with bis machine guns and in so doing leaned his head back so far that he accidentally bumped the pilot’s head. To the pilot this was a sign to dive straight down and then level off again, and so the pilot pushed the stick all the way forward and started a terrific dive.

Hedley was not expecting any such maneuver, and when the plane snapped down in its dive, it threw him completely out of the plane, into the air.

Well, he fell in direct line with the falling plane and when the plane leveled off after its dive, he hit astraddle the fuselage of the plane close to the tail!

The pilot did not know that his observer had even fallen out. When he felt the jolt on the tail of the plane he looked around, and to his amazement saw his observer facing backwards on the tail. The pilot had no idea how he ever got in that position.

Neither did Hedley. He told his squadron mates that when he was thrown out his helmet slipped over his eyes and he couldn’t see anything. Suddenly he realized that he was straddling something.

You can find proof of the story in the British records of the Twentieth: “Lt. Makepeace, M.C., reports Capt. J.H. Hedley accidentally thrown into air, afterwards alighted on tail same machine and rescued.”

The archival information on H.P.S. Green at the top of the post is from the National Press Club Archive Finding Aid prepared by Christina J. Zamon and Jocelyn Manby.