The Only Thing Cooler Than War Wheels...?

If you've been around here long enough, you know of my deep and abiding love for War Wheels...

And you also know of my thrilling discovery that science fiction legend Hugo Gernsback also loved War Wheels, going so far as to propose using them to end WWI!

But you can never learn enough in this crazy world. Because it tuns out that a mere twelve years later, Gernsback help to to take War Wheels to the next level:

HOLY %^&*ING CRAP!! FLYING WAR WHEELS!!!

Yeah, you saw that right.

Air Wonder Stories #10 (1930), edited by Gernsback, had the "Flying Buzzsaw" as a cover feature.

OMG!!!!

Yeah, he didn't write the piece, but you can be damned sure he had some influence on the Flying War Wheels of 2014.

Yeah, I said 2014. See, the story has the narrator, in 1930, injured by an accident that sent a blade from a circular saw flying, and he "woke up" Dorothy-style in war-torn 2014:

Eerily accurate!!

Anyway, they go into great detail how marvelously effective "flying buzzsaws" would be in aerial warfare. Here, I'll let you read the tale yourself:

 Scoff if you wish...but just picture what our lives would have been like if we had had Top Gun done with flying War Wheels!!

WAR WHEELS!!! 

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Even Aliens Love War Wheels!!

We've talked before about how cool and wonderful War Wheels are, and how surprisingly common the idea has been throughout history.

Still, it may not be entirely a coincidence that a mere 3 months after this debut...

...something very similar turned up at another publisher:

But see, these aren't Nazi War Wheels...they're alien war wheels, from the world of Eboli, "behind the dark side of the moon." Don't worry, it's an Airboy thing.

Anyway, Prince Ovid and his wizened mentor have been deposed by the evil Gorga. They fled to Earth, but he's come to hunt them down.

Hunt them down with...

...WAR WHEELS!!!

And they're just as nasty as the Nazi versions!

They find the prince's crash site...

Yes, they have their own stupid alien lingo.

Fact: alien War Wheels are even more unstoppable than Nazi War Wheels!

Well, fortunately for Earth, the prince had been found boy Airboy, who has realized the one chink in the alien War Wheels' armor:

A War Wheel can be stopped...BY ANOTHER WAR WHEEL!!

One lever controls all!

The winner?

Well, Gorga dies, and Ovid returns to Eboli:

Wait...alien War Wheels can fly?? Why the hell waste time wandering around the ground, then...?!?!?!

From Airboy Comics Vol. 9 #11 (1952)

The Gyro-Electric Destroyer, or Why Wasn't This In The Wonder Woman Movie?!?!?

So, I'm tooling around the intra-nets, just to see what I can see, and I stumble across this:

The Electrical Experimenter was kind of the Popular Mechanics of its day, its day being the teens of the last century. Edited by Hugo Gernsback (!), the magazine was dedicated to all things about the modern marvel of electricity, both in the present and in the future. Here's a typical table of contents:

Electricity!!

Anyway, the point of this--at least the comic book-related point--is that amongst their other features, Electrical Experimenter often proposed new types of military equipment to help end The Great War. And in the February 1918 issue, Hugo Gernsback proposed this device to break the stalemate of trench warfare:

Holy shit. I mean, Holy. Shit. Hugo Gernsback invented the War Wheel back in 1918?!?!?

Of course, Blackhawk is merely the most famous version of this type of vehicle; it's a fairly common trope. And Gernsback was hardly the first to propose such a device. But to comics fans of a certain age, man, the Gyro-Electric Destroyer sure brings the War Wheel to mind!

Gernsback even gives us schematics and diagrams!!

Hugo was "quite confident" that the Gyro-Electrical Destroyer would put a quick end to the war:

And here's the thing--once you establish the War Wheel as a (fantastical) possibility in WWI, well, why the hell didn't you have Wonder Woman fight that in her movie, instead of boring old poison gas!?!? [Especially when, to preserve your PG-13 rating, you don't show a single person actually killed by the gas. Just sayin.'] Wonder Woman vs. War Wheel--it just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it? WW v. WW!!

I can even picture the scene:

Scientist: General, I have perfected the Gyro-Electrical Destroyer!!
General Ludendorrf: No, no, that name will never do. I shall call it--my War Wheel!!

That is why I am never allowed to write movies.

Anyway, there's nothing deeper here. I'm just stunned to find that Hugo Gernsback invented the flipping War Wheel in 1918--on page 666 of his magazine!! What a world!!

I'll leave you with the full article: