From pulp fiction to silver wings

Air Classics, Feb 2001 by Felsenfeld, William

HOW THE PULP AVIATION MAGAZINES

OF THE 1930s

INFLUENCED

A YOUNG MAN TO BECOME A USAAF PILOT

My love of airplanes began in the early 1930s. I saw movies of the Great War in the air and was fascinated by those helmeted and goggled men, their faces stained with oil and burned gun powder. They looked so glamorous and heroic! I can still hear the chattering of their machine guns, Vickers and Spandaus, and the blipping of rotary engines as the planes came in to land, sideslipping from one side to another. I remember The Dawn Patrol, Hell's Angels, The Eagle and The Hawk, Hell in the Heavens, Ace of Aces, and The Devil's Squadron. I loved the serials Tailspin Tommy, The Black Ace and others.

My obsession led to model building at about the age of twelve.

But, as most youngsters did, my efforts ended up as "flamers" that were tossed from an upstairs room. In my adult years, I bui and saved several World War One models, all in various states of disrepair. I am jus now putting the finishing touches on a Stearman that was given to me years ago b students in my sixth grade class when I was a school teacher. It's finished in aluminun paint with the numeral 24-E, the plane I soloed in primary flying on 23 February 1945. For years, I even had my students building balsa models as part of a science unit dealing with the theory of flight. Participation was nearly 100 percent and former students still remember all that work in class. They loved every moment and faithfully remember with fondness those hours spent in class toiling over detailed plans.

My interest really peaked in 1938, when, at the age of 13, I read my first pulp fiction magazine. I was sitting in a barber shop awaiting my turn to get a haircut. On a table were the usual dated magazines and periodicals for customers to read while waiting. The cover illustration on one magazine caught my eye. The picture depicted a man in the rear seat of an old airplane being attacked by a corpse-like creature rising from what looked like a rotted wooden casket. The casket was strapped to the fuselage of the plane. The creature held a wooden slat high above his head ready to strike the man who was firing at him with a machine gun. I could not resist reading the magazine to find out what this bizarre scene meant and what was going to happen next. The title of the story was "Flight From the Grave" as told to Robert J. Hogan by G-8. The magazine was G-8 and His Battle Aces.

I borrowed the magazine and read all 82 pages in one sitting. I was hooked! Because I had always been fascinated by airplanes and flying during that period of aviation, the story whetted my appetite for reading further about the flying and fighting adventures of men in The Great War. I began purchasing all of them...Dare-Devil Aces, Battle Birds, Sky Fighters, Fighting Aces, Flying Aces, Air Trails, Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds, and every publication dealing with the subject. I even bought back issues! I read and re-read each story until I could tell each plot just by knowing the titles. I could also identify the writers by the titles. I became familiar with the names of the authors: Darrell Jordan, 0. B. Myers, Harold F. Cruickshank, Joe Archibald, Arch Whitehouse, Robert Sidney Bowen, Major George Fielding Elliott, William Hartley, Robert J. Hogan, and others. Rumor suggested that the stories were written by one or two of these men using all those names. Although these tales were not artistic works of literature, I enjoyed the stories and the brave courageous men became my heroes. The action was fast, the situations were unlikely, and the endings were quite satisfying. I read and collected these pulps until I had accumulated almost a thousand of them. After I got married, my father got rid of them. He thought that I had no further use for them! Today, collectors of nostalgia would find them valuable. I wish I still had them.

During the war, when I reached the age of 18 in 1943, 1 volunteered for the Air Force, hoping to realize my most anxious dream of becoming a military pilot. It wasn't fast, and it wasn't easy. I had to pass the written and physical exams first. I got through the tests and was called to duty on 27 September 1943. My basic training was at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri.

I survived the drilling, the psychomotor tests and the usual humiliations and was sent to the University of Arkansas for five months of college training. Luckily, I passed the English, Math, History, and Physics. The wash-out rate was high which kept us in a constant state of worry and tension. We were then assigned to "on-theline" training at Enid Field in Oklahoma, two months of busy work until we could go to the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center (SAACC) where, finally, after all these months, the pre-flight school had openings for us. What should have been 14 weeks of pre-flight turned out to be a period of almost seven months. From July 1944 until February 1945, it was more physics, math, airplane engines, Morse code, gigs, demerits, punishment tours and wash-outs. It was during this period that I found out that I qualified for pilot training which was an answer to my prayers. I decided that the courses that were most valuable to me were airplane identification and theory of flight.