AGE OF ACES will be back at PulpFest again this year where we will be debuting our two new titles!

We’re taking a break from Donald Keyhoe whose stories we’ve been reprinting religiously practically every year since 2011—for just this year to start up two new series character collections. Have no fear, Keyhoe’s Devildog Squadron will return next year.

If you were here at Christmas, then you’re familiar with Arch Whitehouse’s Casket Crew. We uploaded the six stories Whitehouse ran in the British version of Air Stories featuring the crew over the holidays. Here we bring you the first volume of their run in Aces magazine.

The Casket Crew
by ARCH WHITEHOUSE

One-Oh-Nine Squadron of the Independent Air Force was the craziest bomber squadron on the Western Front and Handley Page No.11 was the reason why. It was flown by The Casket Crew: Lieutenant Graham Townsend, the mad Englishman, pilot of No.11; Lieutenant Phil Armitage, equally crazy American, the reserve pilot and bombing officer; Corporal Andy McGregor, wearing his Black Watch kilts, aerial gunner; with Sergeant Michael Ryan, silent fighting Irishman on the toggle board and Corporal Harry Marks, dizzy Australian, manning the rear gun-turret. There was enough insanity scrawled across the log book of No.11 to make the wildest fiction seem tame in comparison!

The extraordinarily prolific Arch Whitehouse drew upon his own experiences as a tail-gunner in the Royal Air Force to bring to life the colorful aces that flew through his stories. His characters for Flying Aces and Sky Birds were extremely popular with readers of the 1930’s and ’40s. The Casket Crew was his only series outside those magazines, running in the pages of Aces and Wings. This exciting collection features five crazy exploits from Aces Magazine: Lost Wings (8/31), Terror Turret (2/32), Handley Hate (5/32), The Flying Fortress (6/32), and Thunder Patrol (9/32).

Paired with this is the first volume of Alexis Rossoff’s Hell-Cat Squadron! We’ve posted a couple Hell-Cat stories from War Birds, but the series was rebooted when it moved to Flying Aces so that seemed like a good place to start.

The Hell-Cat Squadron: Cyclops of the Skies
by Alexis Rossoff

The order came direct from G.H.Q.: “Send one undesirable pilot of your organization to Alons. Arrange pilot’s departure from your drome so that he will reach destination not earlier than second hour nor later than third hour after noon, twenty-eighth day this month.” Never was an order complied with more promptly as thirty cursing, rebelious undesirables found themselves thrown together in the doomed, scorched region known by all as Hell’s Half Acre. There, under the command of “Iron” Mike Hilton, himself ostrasized for questioning his superiors, they became the Hell-Cats!

Siberian-born, Russian war veteran Alexis Rossoff started writing air and war fiction stories in the late 1920’s as his eyesight slowly faded away. The adventures in this volume are from 1931 to 1932. After a successful operation to restore his vision in the mid thirties, Rossoff, a self-professed boxing nut, switched from primarily writing air war fiction to writing sports stories. This action-packed tome compiles six thrilling adventures from the pages of Flying Aces Magazine: Hell-Cat Harvest (1/31), The Old Man’s Whiskers (2/31), The Hell-Cat’s Kittens (3/31), The Cyclops of the Skies (6/31), Rusty Rides the Thunderbolt (12/31), and The Black Moth (1/32).

In addition to these new books, we’ll have all of our other titles on hand as well as our previous convention exclusive—Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Kirk, and 2022’s two book set of Steve Fisher’s Sheridan Doome! So if you’re planning on coming to Pittsburgh for PulpFest this year, stop by our table and say hi and pick up our latest releases!

We hope we see you there!

THIS month we’re celebrating the Christmas Season with The Coffin Crew! Yes, Arch Whitehouse’s hell-raising Handley Page bomber crew! Piloting the bus is the mad Englishman, Lieutenant Graham Townsend, with the equally mad Canadian Lieutenant Phil Armitage serving as reserve pilot and bombing officer with Private Andy McGregor, still wearing his Black Watch kilts, rounding out the front end crew in the forward gun turret. And don’t forget the silent fighting Irishman Sergeant Michael Ryan, usually dragging on his short clay pipe while working over the toggle board dropping the bombs with Alfred Tate and crazy Australian Andy Marks or Horsey Horlick manning the rear gun turret.

Hawker, Ball, Rhys-Davids, McCudden, Mannock—and now Mackenzie—lost. The news of Mackenzie’s disastrous loss spred quickly—youthful Major Mackenzie, the colorful British ace of Scottish ancestry, had captured the imagination of every soldier in the British trenches. They dubbed him “The Mad Major” because of his amazingly daring exploits in “ground strafing” German trenches. Lost.

Enter the Coffin Crew! Somehow The Coffin Crew turns their disastrous landing behind enemy lines to their benefit when Andy McGregor’s curiosity is peaked as the Crew try to head back across the lines unmolested.

From the pages of the January 1938 number of the British Air Stories, it’s Arch Whitehouse’s final Coffin Crew tale—”Traitor’s Tune!”

It was a Strange Clue that First Linked a Lonely Graveyard behind the Enemy’s Lines with the Mysterious Disappearance of Britain’s Greatest Air Fighters, and Led that Crazy Band of Night Bombers, the Coffin Crew, upon the Most Desperate Adventure of their Madcap Fighting Career!

• Download “Traitor’s Tune” (January 1938, Air Stories)

THIS month we’re celebrating the Christmas Season with The Coffin Crew! Yes, Arch Whitehouse’s hell-raising Handley Page bomber crew! Piloting the bus is the mad Englishman, Lieutenant Graham Townsend, with the equally mad Canadian Lieutenant Phil Armitage serving as reserve pilot and bombing officer with Private Andy McGregor, still wearing his Black Watch kilts, rounding out the front end crew in the forward gun turret. And don’t forget the silent fighting Irishman Sergeant Michael Ryan, usually dragging on his short clay pipe while working over the toggle board dropping the bombs with Alfred Tate and crazy Australian Andy Marks or Horsey Horlick manning the rear gun turret.

When it was all over, the members of the Coffin Crew realized that Corporal Andy McGregor had had good reason for his actions, and of the three things that happened any one might have provided the clue to his strange behavior. First, there was a letter postmarked Monymusk which Lieutenant Townsend remembered was a small town near Aberdeen. Secondly, Andy had shown unusual interest in an American regiment that was heading for the front line and the special interest Andy had taken in the arrival of a new officer, an American Air Corps captain. But the Coffin Crew did not remember these trifling events when Andy went “barmy”!

From the pages of the March 1937 number of the British Air Stories, it’s Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Crew in “Tartan Flight!”

Into the Very Shadow of Death Flew the Coffin Crew, the Craziest Band of Warriors in the Independent Air Force, to Discover the Secret of that Sinister Mound of the Dead, Hill 60, and its Strange Effect upon Corporal Andy McGregor, Aerial Gunner!

• Download “Tartan Flight” (March 1937, Air Stories)

Be sure to drop by Friday for one last mad cap romp through hell skies with the Coffin Crew!

THIS month we’re celebrating the Christmas Season with The Coffin Crew! Yes, Arch Whitehouse’s hell-raising Handley Page bomber crew! Piloting the bus is the mad Englishman, Lieutenant Graham Townsend, with the equally mad Canadian Lieutenant Phil Armitage serving as reserve pilot and bombing officer with Private Andy McGregor, still wearing his Black Watch kilts, rounding out the front end crew in the forward gun turret. And don’t forget the silent fighting Irishman Sergeant Michael Ryan, usually dragging on his short clay pipe while working over the toggle board dropping the bombs with Alfred Tate and crazy Australian Andy Marks or Horsey Horlick manning the rear gun turret.

To Sergeant Ryan there was one square mile of enemy territory that must remain inviolate—yet Fate made it the objective of the most daring raid of that crazy band of bombers, the Coffin Crew! From the pages of the July 1936 issue of the British Air Stories magazine, it’s Arch Whitehouse’s “Bomber’s Luck!”

A Raid, whatever its Objective, was All Part of the Game to that Crazy Band of Bombers, the Coffin Crew of the Independent Air Force—until Fate Decreed that the Hand of Sergeant Ryan should be the One to Loose Death and Destruction upon the One Square Mile of Enemy Territory that, to Him, Must Ever Remain Inviolate!

• Download “Bomber’s Luck” (July 1936, Air Stories)

Be sure to drop by next week for another mad cap romp, or two, through hell skies with the Coffin Crew!

THIS month we’re celebrating the Christmas Season with The Coffin Crew! Yes, Arch Whitehouse’s hell-raising Handley Page bomber crew! Piloting the bus is the mad Englishman, Lieutenant Graham Townsend, with the equally mad Canadian Lieutenant Phil Armitage serving as reserve pilot and bombing officer with Private Andy McGregor, still wearing his Black Watch kilts, rounding out the front end crew in the forward gun turret. And don’t forget the silent fighting Irishman Sergeant Michael Ryan, usually dragging on his short clay pipe while working over the toggle board dropping the bombs with Alfred Tate and crazy Australian Andy Marks or Horsey Horlick manning the rear gun turret.

The Crew were through! Armitage had been reassigned to a Camel unit that was to counter whatever it was that was downing troopships in the channel and leaving no one alive on board. But when even Armitage goes missing—that’s all the Crew can take. Thankfully Armitage is not dead, he’s merely put his foot in the middle of the whole diabolical mystery! From the pages of the August 1935 number of the British Air Stories, Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Crew and the “Black Camels!”

A Black Plague stalked the Channel turning Troopships into Transports of the Dead. And, in France, five Black Camels were Detailed for a Secret Mission that was Destined to give that Crazy Band of Warriors, the Coffin Crew, the Adventure of their Lives!

• Download “Black Camels” (August 1935, Air Stories)

Be sure to drop by next week for another mad cap romp through hell skies with the Coffin Crew!

WE’RE celebrating Christmas with The Coffin Crew this year. So why not get to know the author a little better? And what better time than his birthday! Arthur George Joseph “Arch” Whitehouse was born on this day, December 11th, in 1895 in England. To Celebrate the genius behind The Coffin Crew, here’s a great feature on Whitehouse from the Sunday magazine for the Hackensack, New Jersey Record.

Arch Whitehouse: An Early Bird Looks Back

The Record Magazine, Hackensack, New Jersey • 17 April 1965, p38-39

MONTVALE’S MAGNOLIA AVENUE is a rural, winding road, and the modest yellow house at No.63 looks like many other suburban homes.

So it’s not surprising that when Arch Whitehouse, the owner, steps into the brisk air for an afternoon constitutional that his neighbors may look up and say:

“Well, there goes that nice Mr. Whitehouse out for his afternoon walk. Retired gentleman, I guess. It’s nice that he can still get around so well.

When the mailman leaves a 2-foot pile of books on the Whitehouse doorstep, a neighbor may shake his head and silently question, “I wonder if he reads all those books?”

Possibly a few people in Montvale know the answer to the Whitehouse mystery, but the man himself is quite certain that the majority of those who have made note of his presence are content with the thought that he’s no more than a retired businessman.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Though now in his 70th year, Arch Whitehouse is busier than many men half his age. In the past 10 years he has written 25 books. Before that, he authored more than a thousand short stories and articles.

A flier with the British Royal Flying Corps in World War I, Whitehouse ranks today as probably the leading aviation writer in the world. He is regarded as THE expert on World War I flying.

But his writing has run the gamut of the military field.

He went on a North Atlantic cruise aboard the atomic submarine Skipjack while writing “Subs and Submariners”.

He made two trips to the Mediterranean with the Sixth Fleet, and made 11 catapult takeoffs from, and arrester-gear landings on aircraft carriers to write “Squadrons of the Sea”.

He inspected every type of tank that has ever been built, and rode in many of the modern tank tests to write “TANK — History of Armored Warfare”.

He flew on practically every type plane available in the U.S. Air Force, including 2-seater jet fighters, to tell the story of the Tactical Air Command. He also went to McMurdo Sound, Antartica, to cover T.A.C. cargo operations at the South Pole.

He went to Puerto Rico with the Navy and Marines to write his recent “Amphibious Operations”.

Some years Whitehouse averages 60,000 miles of flying to get material for his books.

In addition to his technical books, short stories, and articles, Whitehouse has written juvenile and motion-picture scripts. Two of his stories — “Spitfire Squadron” and “‘H’ For Arry” were sold to the movies. He has illustrated some of his own volumes, also.

Among Whitehouse’s recent books — he contracts for several at a time — is “The Fledgling,” an autobiography.

Whitehouse was born in England in 1895. He was brought to the United States when he was 9 years old. He attended grade schools in Newark and Livingston. He was taken out of school, however, and worked in a Newark bookshop, a shoe factory, and in the Edison Laboratory before the outbreak of World War I.

In 1914, he worked his way to England on a cattleboat and enlisted in the British army. After a spell in the infantry, be requested and received a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, and served as an aerial gunner with No. 22 squadron from March 1917 to Jan. 18, 1918. He then became the pilot of a Sopwith Camel with the home-defense squadron until the Armistice.

During his days as a gunner, he flew more than 1,300 hours over enemy lines. He destroyed 16 enemy planes and six kite balloons, but since he was not the pilot he received no personal credit. His kills were chalked up to his squadron.

During those clays. Whitehouse swapped bullets with many of the German aces, including the best of them all, Baron von Richthofen. The Red Knight, as von Richthofen was to become known, claimed 80 victories. One of these, No.42 to be exact, is disputed by Whitehouse.

In his “Years of the Sky Kings”, Whitehouse writes:

“Let us consider victory No.42, scored on April 13, 1917. In his report, von Richthofen stated that this flight took place at 12:45 P.M. betwen Monchy and Feuchy. The plane, a Vickers 2-seater, was downed behind British lines. In this report, we have at least one example of a Richthofen victory that was no victory at all.

“I was the gunner aboard that 2-seater. It was a F.E.2b, not a Vickers, but the Germans often made this mistake since both planes were almost identical. We were not shot down by Baron von Richthofen.”

Whitehouse went on to explain that his plane, piloted by Captain Bush, was returning from a photography patrol, when attacked by German planes over German lines. The propeller of the British plane was eventually shot away by antiaircraft fire. As the plane dove for a crash landing behind British lines, Whitehouse noted that they were pursued by two German planes, one of them red, and piloted, as he was learn later, by the Baron.

After returning to the United States in October, 1919, Whitehouse found the competition for work rather stiff. He tried his hand at selling rat poison, magazine advertising space, and automobiles. He spent some time in an insurance office.

In 1920 he married Ruth Terhune of Rutherford. Today they have a son and two grandchildren.

In 1922, he applied for a job as sports cartoonist on a Passaic newspaper. He was hired, though he had no prior experience. A year later, he moved to the Elizabeth Daily Journal as sports editor.

When Charles Lindbergh made his solo flight to Paris in 1927, Whitehouse wrote a column about it. A friend who read it suggested he try writing for one of the aviation pulp magazines. He submitted a story, and received a check for $100. The editor was impressed by the authenticity of the story, and hired Whitehouse to check the facts in other stories being submitted.

At the same time, he found a waiting market for his own fiction, and eventually quit the newspaper job to devote his full time to this work.

The start of World War II signaled a new phase in Whitehouse’s career. He became an accredited war correspondent, and served in the North Atlantic and Great Britain. He was also in on the Normandy invasion.

He returned to the States in 1945, and spent 2 years as a film writer before tearing up a 7-year contract, and returning East.

His first book, a juvenile, “The Real Book of Airplanes”, appeared in 1955. He has written juveniles also on General Pershing, Billy Mitchell, and wartime courier pigeons, and has agreed to do a long series of books fictionalizing the exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille.

Five volumes of his aviation short stories have appeared so far. Other recent or forthcoming books are “Adventures in Military Intelligence”, “The Early Birds—Wonders and History of Early Flight”, “Frank Luke—The Arizona Balloon Buster”, and a novel, “Squadron 44”.

Commenting on the continued popularity of World War I books, Arch credits much of it to nostalgia. “You’ll find a similar nostalgia catching up with the veterans of World War II,” he said. “For a few years they just want to forget it all. Then one day there seems to be that urge to recapture the past.”

And when they do, you can be sure Arch Whitehouse will be around to help them.

• Download “Arch Whitehouse: An Early Bird Looks Back” (17 April 1965, The Record Magazine, Hackensack, NJ)

Be sure to drop by Friday for another mad cap romp through hell skies with Whitehouse’s Coffin Crew!

THIS month we’re celebrating the Christmas Season with The Coffin Crew! Yes, Arch Whitehouse’s hell-raising Handley Page bomber crew! Piloting the bus is the mad Englishman, Lieutenant Graham Townsend, with the equally mad Canadian Lieutenant Phil Armitage serving as reserve pilot and bombing officer with Private Andy McGregor, still wearing his Black Watch kilts, rounding out the front end crew in the forward gun turret. And don’t forget the silent fighting Irishman Sergeant Michael Ryan, usually dragging on his short clay pipe while working over the toggle board dropping the bombs with Alfred Tate and crazy Australian Andy Marks or Horsey Horlick manning the rear gun turret.

For more than a week old No.11 had been welcoming her new neighbours with T.N.T. and fulminite. For seven days they had been dealing out nightly headaches to Baron Harald von Wusthoff and his Gotha Griffons. Fed up with the nightly barrage and inability to get his Gothas in the air, the Baron engineers the capture of the Crew’s pilot and leader Graham Townsend and subsequent use as a hostage to keep the Coffin Crew at bay.

To the Coffin Crew:
      This should stop you from bombing our field any more. Your pilot will be held as hostage to ensure that fact. He will be staked out on the ground everytime your ’planes come across—so drop your bombs at your own risk, gentlemen. Perhaps now we can contend in the air on terms that are more equal.
                                          (Signed) The Golhas 33rd,
                                          Von Wusthoff, Commanding.

From the pages of the June 1935 number of the British Air Stories, it’s Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Crew in “Hostage of the Gothas!”

When Treachery robbed the Coffin Crew of their Dare-devil Leader, that Crazy Band of Bombers carried their Hate through the Valley of Death into the very Lair of the Gotha Griffons. And in the Air, a Handley clashed with a Gotha in a Duel for which the Forfeit was a Flaming Death!

• Download “Hostage of the Gothas” (June 1935, Air Stories)

Be sure to drop by next week for another mad cap romp through hell skies with the Coffin Crew!

THIS month we’re going to be celebrating the holidays with Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Crew! The Coffin Crew has as checkered a history in the pulps as they did in The Great War. The Coffin Crew is, in reality just a renamed Casket Crew. Arch Whitehouse had many series characters—there was flying reporter and U.S. Naval agent Billy “Buzz” Benson; Kerry Keen—ballistics expert by day and masked aerial crime fighter by night known as The Griffon; Coffin Kirk and his simian copilot Tank; Hale Aircraft Corporation Salesman and soldier of fortune Crash Carringer; Secret Service agents Todd Bancroft and Larry Leadbeater; those two old news-hawks Tug Hardwick and Beansie Bishop; and that hell-raising crew of a Handley Page bomber, the Casket Crew! So many, that when it came time to write a series of tales for the new Air Stories magazine in England, he simply wrote more stories of the Casket Crew and just renamed them The Coffin Crew for British readers.

Whitehouse had seven stories in the pages of the British Air Stories magazine—six of them were Coffin Crew adventures. This month we’ll be featuring those six tales as Age of Aces Books brings you “Christmas with the Coffin Crew!”

The Coffin Crew man a Handley Page bomber for one of the squadrons that makes up the Independent Air Force during the First World War. The Independent Air Force was chiefly brought about by the intensive Gotha raids on England during the first six months of 1917. The public demanded reprisals, so three squadrons were banded together with the purpose of giving back to the Germans what they had been doling out to the British.

The Handley Page 0/400 was generally crewed by five people. You had your front gunner, tail gunner, pilot, reserve pilot/bombing officer, and bomber. In the Coffin Crew stories, there is generally a sixth man whose job is to relay the info from the bomb sighter to the bomber so he knows when to pull the toggles and drop the bombs. Characters come and go, but the core members of the Coffin Crew are Lieutenant Graham Townsend, the mad Englishman, is the pilot of the bus with Lieutenant Phil Armitage, equally mad Canadian, the reserve pilot and bombing officer with Private Andy McGregor, still wearing his Black Watch kilts, rounding out the front end crew in the forward gun turret. Silent fighting Irishman Sergeant Michael Ryan, dragging on his short clay pipe, frequently worked the toggle board dropping the bombs and Horsey Horlick manning the rear gun turret.

The Casket Crew started with two stories in Airplane Stories (November 1930 & March 1931) before flying into the pages of Aces for 7 adventures in 1931 and 1932; followed by an additional 7 adventures in the pages of Wings in 1934 and 1935; and wrapping up in the final two issues of War Birds in 1937. These adventures of The Coffin Crew would slot in between the Wings and War Birds issues.

The Coffin Crew starts off with a bang—even being on the cover of the first issue of Air Stories by S. Drigin. In this first story, the Crew is joined by one Meridith Lovelace who makes quite the entrance.

Mr. Meridith Lovelace was ready for the air. And how! His beaming countenance was encased in a fur-lined leather helmet, for which about three hundred Swiss yodellers must have hunted the elusive chamoix for years to get such priceless skins. On top of this rested the finest pair of Triplex glass goggles money could buy. Their lenses were bound in silver bands and the mask-pad was downy with sleek beaver. Beneath the turned-up leather collar of a gaudy flying-coat was wrapped a scarf that would have made Joseph and his Biblical coat go out and take the veil—evidently Meridith’s school colours. The coat in question was a natty garment cut for a musical-comedy aviator, but which must have put a heavy crimp in Mr. Lovelace’s Pay and Mess Book No.54. Beneath that glistened the most polished pair of knee-length, fur-lined flying-boots ever turned out of Bond Street. And then, as if this were not enough for one evening, Mr. Lovelace sported a pair of flying gauntlets, fur-lined, of course, and a long ebony cigarette-holder that glowed at its tip like the gleam of a rapier that is just about to puncture someone’s mess department.

Despite this, the boy knows his stuff and comes through in a pinch and they soon wonder whose war their fighting. From the pages of the May 1935 number of the British Air Stories, it’s Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Crew in “One Man’s War!”

When the exquisite Mr. Meridith Lovelace was appointed to the toggle-board of Handley-Page bomber No. II, there were doleful prophecies of the fate that would befall the Coffin Crew—that happy band of R.F.C. warriors whose exploits were known from end to end of the Allied lines. But Mr. Lovelace had his own ideas about winning the war—and the Coffin Crew soon found themselves embarked on the craziest adventure in all their mad-cap career.

• Download “One Man’s War” (May 1935, Air Stories)

Be sure to drop by next week for another mad cap romp through hell skies with the Coffin Crew!

THIS week we have another gripping tale from the prolific pen of Arch Whitehouse! Whitehouse had numerous series characters in the various air pulps—none ran longer than Buzz Benson! Billy “Buzz” Benson’s exploits started in the February 1930 issue of Sky Birds and appeared in every subsequent issue until it folded. Not to be twarted, Whitehouse moved Buzz over to Flying Aces where his exploits rotated with his many other characters in that title. For the uninitiated, Buzz Benson was a flying reporter for the Los Angeles Mercury newspaper, but his real job was far more dangerous. He is a secret agent and pilot extraordinaire for the U.S. military.

A young model builder stumbled on an idea the U.S. Government had been seeking for years. An Air Service official was murdered. A giant Curtiss Condor crashed to its doom on the desolate sand dunes of Chesapeake Bay. Those three things happened far apart—yet they led Buzz Benson into the mystery of the sinister sentinel known as Devils Trap Light!

• Download “The Sinister Sentinel” (September 1934, Sky Birds)

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.

Moving on from the George Bruce letter, a few pages later we find what looks like another letter, folded into thirds like it too had just been pulled out of an envelope and pasted to the page. . .

Unfolding the sheet of paper reveals a letter from Arch Whitehouse on Magazine Publishers Incorporated letterhead from March 7th, 1929.

Arch Whitehouse was one of the most prolific aviation writers out there. He created numerous series characters with names like Buzz Benson, Tug hardwick, Coffin Kirk, Crash Carringer, the Casket Crew, and many more. These series characters created for Flying Aces and Sky Birds were extremely popular with the readers back in the 30’s and 40’s. Month after month he brought these colorful aces to life. Whitehouse scope and breadth of information on aviation was so great that he also answered all questions written in to the magazines from the readers.

Robert had apparently written in about learning to fly and Arch Whitehouse felt the need to respond with words of encouragement personally to a then 19 year-old Robert.

Writing from New York City, Whitehouse advises:

Dear Robert:

    You have the right idea. Stick to it. Aviation has come to stay and a few accidents will not keep the real air-minded Americans out of the sky. I myself have flown several thousand hours, including two-thousand in France during the war, and I have yet to break a wire.

    A good training course will cost anything from $300 to $500 and the time required depends all upon yourself, if you are a natural born flier, you will learn quickly and save that much money, –but do not be in too much of a hurry.

                    Hoping to hear from you again soon, I am,
              Sincerely yours,                        

                              Arch Whitehouse
                              Technical editor
                              Sky Birds and Flying Aces Magazines.

WE’VE come to the final story of our twelve tales from the Christmas 1931 issues, and what better way to go out, than with a story from the ever-reliable Arch Whitehouse! Always a crowd-pleaser, Whitehouse wrote hundreds of tales for the air pulps with many featuring series characters. Possibly his longest running series was Buzz Benson! Buzz was featured in every issue of Sky Birds starting with the February 1930 issue. When Sky Birds closed up shop, Buzz moved over to Flying Aces where he continued for two more years.

Billy “Buzz” Benson is a flying reporter for the Los Angeles Mercury newspaper, but his real job is much more dangerous—he is a secret agent and pilot extraordinaire for the U.S. military. In this month’s issue, deadly forces have stolen the latest high-powered submarine, the Baracuda, as well as kidnapped the designer’s daughter. It’s up to Buzz to get them both back!

The Navy had named their newest submarine the Barracuda, after the deadliest fish that infests tropical waters—that sharp-toothed killer that will attack anything for the joy of battle. Then that sub turned against its masters—and Billy “Buzz” Benson took off on the blood-strewn trail of the killer ship!

• Download “Web of the Spider” (December 1931, Sky Birds)

WHILE browsing through eBay a couple months ago, I came upon these two snapshots from a family’s Christmas in Memphis 1931. What caught my eye was the little boy all dressed up as a WWI ace with leather jacket, aviator’s cap with goggles, and some sort of tall leather boots(?)! It got me thinking about what stories that boy could have been reading that rather mild, snowless December in Memphis.

So this month we’ll be featuring stories published in the December 1931 issues of Aces, Sky Birds, War Aces and War Birds, by some of our favorite authors—Arch Whitehouse, O.B. Myers, Frederick C. Painton, Frederick C. Davis, Donald E. Keyhoe, and George Bruce—as well as a couple new or seldom seen authors to our site—Elliot W. Chess, Edgar L. Cooper, and Robert Sidney Bowen.

Looking at that impressive list, you may be wondering where a few of our most often posted authors are. Authors like Ralph Oppenheim, Harold F. Cruickshank, Lester Dent and Joe Archibald. That’s a bit of good news/bad news. The good news, we’ve already posted the stories Ralph Oppenheim (“Lazy Wings”) and Lester Dent (“Bat Trap”) had in the December 1931 War Aces; the bad, I don’t have the December 1931 issues of Wings featuring George Bruce, F.E. Rechnitzer and Edwin C. Parsons or Flying Aces with Keyhoe, Archibald, George Fielding Eliot, Alexis Rossoff, and William E. Poindexter. And as for Cruickshank—he didn’t have a story in any of the air pulps that month.

With that in mind—and since it’s Monday, let’s get the ball rolling with the covers of Christmas 1931!

Come back on Wednesdays and Fridays this month for some of the great fiction from these issues!

THIS week we have a short, but gripping tale from the prolific pen of Arch Whitehouse! The pilots of No. 17 Squadron, A.E.F., were doing swell until “The Lancer” appeared on the scene. They were flying Spads, which were fair and reasonably effective against anything Jerry had—until the Lancer turned up flying that damned black triplane. There is a law of compensation somewhere in the book, and eventually it worked; for after six Yanks of No. 17 went west, Bob Shawn came up from the Pilot’s Pool. After that, while he never knew it, the Lancer was a marked man. From the March 1937 issue of Sky Fighters, it’s Arch Whitehouse’s “Wings of the Lancer”

Through Flaming Skies, Bob Shawn and Butts Brian Trail a Boche Butcher!

• Download “Wings of the Lancer” (March 1937, Sky Fighters)

THIS week we have a short, but gripping tale from the prolific pen of Arch Whitehouse! Whitehouse gives us Len Stallard, a natural pilot and a keen hunter. He had a one-track mind and, once mounted in an active service squadron, he went to work with inevitable results—Four Huns the first week, a citation and a Croix de Guerre. Unfortunately, as good as he was in the air, he was equally poor on the ground—and found himself unable to mix with the rest of the gang at No.76. He discovers how his fellow pilots feel about him when his plane goes down behind enemy lines! From the August 1936 issue of Sky Fighters, it’s Arch Whitehouse’s “The Hun Hunter!”

Hated alike by friend and foe, Len Stallard lights out for Boche territory to end it all!

• Download “The Hun Hunter” (August 1936, Sky Fighters)

AGE OF ACES will be back at PulpFest again this year where we will be debuting our two new titles!

Our first is the lastest in our Captain Philip Strange series—back with six more weird WWI stories in Strange Squadrons! A mental marvel from birth, who used his talents on stage as a boy, Philip Strange is now known as “The Phantom Ace of G-2″ by the Allies during WWI. From his very first adventure, Captain Philip Strange has rooted out only the most bizarre battalions commissioned by Germany in the Great War. When flying coffins circle the air, or severed hands drop from the sky, the call goes out for the Phantom Ace of G-2 Intelligence. For the Allies know that only the so-called “Brain-Devil” and his aides can out-fly the zombie traitors and human bombs, or out-spy fiends like The Mask and the Man with the Iron Claw! When World War I gets weird, only America’s own “Phantom Ace of G-2” has a ghost of a chance against the supernatural slaughter. Captain Philip Strange in his strangest cases yet from the pages of Flying Aces magazine!

We’re doubling down on Keyhoe this year, as our other title is the second half of the Jailbird Flight Stories that ran through all three of Popular Publication’s air anthology titles. Starting in Battle Aces in September 1931 running through the end of it’s initial publication run when they switched to Battle Birds at the end of 1932 and into Dare-Devil Aces in 1934.

The Jailbird Flight: The Devil Flies High. They had all been sentenced to a living death and all bore The Convict Brand! The Jailbirds were recruited from the military prisons of Britain, France, and America. Real men, molded in the harsh fires of life, dishonored perhaps in the eyes of the Army—but men with red blood and courage. Hard fighters, some of them hiding bitter memories, but all of them ready to follow their leader, “Killer” Kirby, down a flaming suicide trail on the most dangerous missions of the Great War! Rather than wither behind bars—they were given the chance to die fighting!

In addition to these two volumes we’ll have all of our other titles that are still in print as well as our convention exclusive—Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Kirk. So if you’re planning on coming to Pittsburgh for PulpFest this year, stop by our table and say hi and pick up our latest releases!