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)

THIS week we have a fun tale from the prolific pen of Alexis Rossoff. Rossoff started out in the ’20’s writing air and war fiction for the various magazines. By the mid-30’s he had shifted his focus away from tales of WWI intrigue to sports stories. Here we have the first of his Cuckoo’s Nest stories that ran in War Birds in 1930. The Cuckoo’s are an outfit a lot like Keyhoe’s Jailbird Flight—a group of hell cats who found themselves afoul of military rules who have been given another chance to die fighting rather than rotting in Blois cell.

Jerry pilots with victory in their grasp but seconds before, looked up and fear feathers brushed their spines. They had heard of the Cuckoos from wounded comrades lucky enough to escape the previous furious attacks of the wild birds that now hovered above them. From the March 1930 issue of War Birds it’s Alexis Rossoff’s “The Cuckoo’s Nest!”

Into the hell of forgotten men, otherwise known as Blols, plunged that king bird of the war brood, “Wild Bill” Barry. The shell-ripped,”battle-torn world heard no more of him officially he was listed as a deserter—but from that moment a new bird sprouted wings out of the stench of Blois. And that new war bird was part of the lousiest, stinkin’est outfit of bums that ever slashed the belly out of an enemy crate.

• Download “The Cuckoo’s Nest” (March 1930, War Birds)