THIS week we have a story by Alfred Hall Stark. Stark wrote a dozen or so stories for the pulps, frequently dealing with aviation, in the late twenties and early thirties. Stark was a pseudonym for Afred Halle Sinks. Sinks was a native of Ohio, who won his reportorial spurs in New York before heading to Porto Rico to work on the Porto Rico Progress published in San Juan. When sinks returned to the US, he was a staff writer for Popular Science and The Reader’s Digest building a reputation for writing well-researched, fact-based articles for those publications as well as others and newspapers.

Stark wrote “The Hurricane Kid” while still in Porto Rico. It was published in the June 1929 issue of Flying Aces.

Meet Crashing Kid Sperry, the Crack-Up King of the Caribbean, on the payroll as a curiosity. He got sore at the boss, became an air bandit and flew with sensational audacity right into a raging hurricane. Did he come out alright? Read it and see!

• Download “The Hurricane Kid” (June 1929, Flying Aces)

In a brief biographical paragraph from an article in 1963, Alfred Halle Sinks was said to be living in Philadelphia and responsible for the public information program that launched Bucks County’s open space conservation program. By that time he had been editor of the Bucks County Traveler, as well as a staff writer for Popular Science and Reader’s Digest, and had contributed articles to the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Ladies Home Journal, and other leading national magazines.

As a bonus, here’s a letter from Alfred Hall Stark that Flying Aces published in the March issue—the month before the issue this story ran.

Sinks was living in Carversville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania when he passed away October 26th, 1974.

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.

This time, Mr. Myers gives us a tale of the supposed chivalry among enemy pilots in “Square—Hell!” from the pages of the June 1929 number of War Novels!

“Give them both guns in the guts”—that was the flight commander’s treatment for disabled enemy flyers. But air warfare to Larry Fowler was still a game, to be played according to certain rules of sportsmanship.

• Download “Square—Hell!” (June 1929, War Novels)

THIS week we have a story from Raoul Whitfield. Whitfield was a prolific pulp writer 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. We’ve featured a number of his Buck Kent stories that ran in Air Trails, but this time we have a WWI tale!

What are the chances of two men from the same squadron, assigned to the same D.H. for reconnaissance photos, having the same picture of a girl from back home on their coop walls? From the June 1929 number of Over The Top, it’s Raoul Whitfield’s “The Sky Joker!”

Photographs, military and otherwise, bring trouble to a certain American flying squadron in France.

• Download “Sky Pictures” (June 1929, Over The Top)

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.

This time around, on a stop over in Seattle, Rusty os approached by a a good friend to pilot his experimental plane in order to achieve a new altitude record and get some dynamic shots of the eclipse that will be happening. Rusty agrees, if he can have his old pal Steve Branleigh as his copilot. Problem is, Steve was the last pilot to try in this plane and had to bail out before the record was achieved. Can Rusty clear his friend’s name while pushing the experimental plane to its limit? From the pages of the June 1929 Air Trails, it’s Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Frozen Controls!”

“Rusty” Wade makes a momentous decision and leaps into space forty thousand feet above the earth.

• Download “Frozen Controls” (June 1929, Air Trails)

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!

We’re back with the third and final of three Ralph Oppenheim’s Three Mosquitoes stories we’re featuring this March for Mosquito Month! And this one’s a doozy! Who had not heard of that grim nickname—”The Spider”? It was the nickname of Germany’s most notorious spy—the plague and dread of the Allied powers. The whole Allied intelligence system was after this man, but they had never been able to catch him; he seemed to bear a charmed life. Kirby and his comrades had heard many rumors of his wild, hairbreadth escapades, but they had not known how truly deadly he was! And now the Three Mosquitoes found themselves caught in The Spider’s web! From the pages of the June 15th, 1929 issue of War Novels it’s Ralph Oppenheim’s “The Flying Spider!”

Here it is, gang—the greatest flying yarn of the year! Kirby, Travis and Carn, that famous trio of war birds, thought they were going to have a rest. They flew that important visiting Limey, Colonel Haley-Shaw, to England—and then all hell busted loose, for they had landed in the web of the infamous and powerful “Spider.”

• Download “The Flying Spider” (June 15, 1929, War Novels)

THIS week we have a story from the pen of the Navy’s own Allan R. Bosworth. Being a Navy man, Bosworth’s stories primarily dealt with the Navy. In this week’s story from the pages of War Novels, Bosworth gives us the story of some sailors who try to get a game of Craps in and get caught below deck when the ship is torpedoed by a German sub!

Stealthily the four men entered that water-tight storeroom and dogged down the door. Yet they soon found a fifth one among them, grimly smiling at their little game.

From the pages of the June 15th, 1929 issue of War Novels, it “McClarnin Shoots a Natural!”

• Download “McClarnin Shoots a Natural” (15 June 1929, War Novels)