I don’t own this pulp, but I do own an e-book reprint of it
which I read recently because it contains one of David Goodis’s early aviation
yarns, and after reading Cullen Gallagher’s excellent books about Goodis’s pulp
fiction, I wanted to sample one of them. I figured I might as well go ahead and
read the other stories while I was at it.
This is actually the first issue of BATTLE BIRDS’ third incarnation as a pulp.
It started out as a regular aviation/air war pulp under the name BATTLE BIRDS
in December 1932 and continued for 19 issues through the June 1934 issue. Then
with the July 1934 issue, it became a character pulp with science fiction
elements as DUSTY AYRES AND HIS BATTLE BIRDS, with the title character leading
an air war against a future invader of the United States. I read one of those
many, many years ago and probably ought to check out that series again. That
lasted for 12 issues until July/August 1935. The title was dormant for a few
years until BATTLE BIRDS made a comeback with this issue from February 1940.
Robert Sidney Bowen, who wrote all those earlier Dusty Ayres novels as well as
scores of other aviation and air war yarns, leads off this issue with the
novella “The Last Flight of the Damned”. Bowen was a solid pro who knew how to
keep a story perking along with action and drama, but the plot of this one,
involving a German mad scientist who comes up with a super-scientific weapon (powered
by handwavium, no doubt) with which to destroy Allied planes during World War I,
had been done an awful lot, even by 1940. Despite it being well-written, I had
a little trouble working up much excitement about this one—which is absolutely
unfair of me because I’ll read Western pulp stories with plots that had been
used even more and still love them. I know that the stalwart cowboy falling in
love with the rancher’s beautiful daughter and saving the ranch is even more of
a stereotype than the German mad scientist and his super weapon. But I guess as
readers we like what we like, and “The Last Flight of the Damned”, while mildly
entertaining, is nothing special.
David Goodis is up next with “Bullets For the Brave”, published under his own
name instead of one of the numerous house-names under which he also worked, and
it’s about as different as you can get from Bowen’s tale and have both of them
still be World War I aviation yarns. There are no super-weapons in this one,
just raw human emotion and suffering as an American pilot loses his nerve after
surviving being shot down and gets a reputation among his squadron for being
yellow. His efforts to live with that and finally redeem himself are pretty
powerful stuff, and Goodis’s prose is unrelentingly bleak. This is a really
good story and just makes me want to read more of Goodis’s pulp fiction.
I don’t know anything about Moran Tudury except that he wrote hundreds of
stories for various aviation, sports, Western, and romance pulps beginning in
the mid-Twenties and then finally cracked the slicks in the mid-Forties. His
short story in this issue, “The Ghost Rides West”, is about a German ace who is
shot down again and again, only to rise from the grave and continue fighting.
An American pilot who flies for the Lafayette Escadrille eventually figures out
the secret behind this seemingly unkillable ace. It’s a decent story. I don’t
think I’ve ever read anything by Tudury, but based on this yarn, I would again.
Despite his name, Orlando Rigoni was a Westerner born and raised, born in Utah
and spending most of his life in northern California. He was a railroader, a
miner, and worked for the Forest Service in addition to being a very prolific
pulpster who wrote hundreds of stories, mostly for the Western pulps, but he
started out in the aviation pulps and contributed quite a few stories to them.
He also wrote dozens of Western novels and is best remembered for those today.
I knew his name as a Western writer long before I found out he wrote aviation
stories, too. His story in this issue, “Eagles Fly Alone”, is an excellent yarn
about the Horde of Hellions, a group of pilots who are mavericks and have
trouble adjusting to a more disciplined style of flying and fighting when a new
commander comes in. This is the first thing by Rigoni that I recall reading,
although I have several of his Western novels on my shelves. I really ought to
get around to reading them one of these days.
Harold F. Cruickshank is another author I knew as a Western writer long before
I realized he got his start in the war and aviation pulps in the late Twenties.
I haven’t really liked the Western stories I’ve read by him. I don’t know what
it is, but something about them just rubs me the wrong way. He did a long series
in RANGE RIDERS WESTERN about a group of settlers in Sun Bear Valley, a series
that’s sometimes referred to as the Pioneer Folk series. I got to the point that
I just skipped those because I knew I wouldn’t enjoy them. “The Valley of the
Green Death” in this issue is the first air war yarn I’ve read by him, and I
wanted to give it a fair chance. One problem that crops up right away and isn’t
Cruickshank's fault is that the group of pilots in this story is also called
the Hellions. This is something the editor should have addressed by asking
either Cruickshank or Rigoni to change the name of their group or at least not
running the stories back-to-back in the same issue. But again, this isn’t
Cruickshank's fault, so I pressed on. Sure enough, the villain of this story is
a mad German scientist who’s invented a superscientific weapon to kill American
pilots. But wait! This time the mad German scientist isn’t a wizened little
gnome or a disfigured giant. No, he’s actually a pilot himself and an ace, to
boot. This is a very nice twist, and I’ll give Cruickshank credit for it. The
story itself isn’t bad. I thought the writing was a little clunky in places,
but it moves right along and wound up being enjoyable. I’d read more of
Cruickshank's aviation stories, which is good because I have some of them.
“Passport to the Grave” is the only story by Rupert B. Chandler listed in the
Fictionmags Index. That always makes me suspicious that the name is a
pseudonym. This story has an interesting idea—a group of fliers known as
Squadron Ex that’s made up of pilots from different countries—but the writing
is clumsy enough that I had to reread several passages just to figure out what
was going on. One of the squadron’s members is shot down and believed to be
dead, and another pilot goes on a one-man mission to avenge him and uncover a
traitor in the group. There are definitely things to like in this one if the
writing was better. Maybe Rupert B. Chandler was a real guy and that’s the best
he could do. Kind of a shame if he didn’t get a chance to develop, for whatever
reason.
The final story in the issue is “The All-American Ace” by Metteau Miles,
evidently the author’s real name, who published a dozen and a half stories in a
brief career between 1937 and 1941. It’s a pretty good yarn about a former All-American
college football player who’s now a pilot flying alongside a former teammate.
When the teammate gets shot down, the protagonist sets out to avenge him (a lot
of that going around). This is a pretty well-written tale with good characters.
I enjoyed it.
Overall, I enjoyed the whole issue, but the more aviation stories I read, the
more I realize I need to space them out. As I said above, I’m really being unfair
to the genre since I’m a lot more tolerant of stereotypical plots in Westerns—and
in detective and science fiction pulps, too, to be honest—than I am of these.
Still, I’ve become more of an aviation pulp fan than I’ve been in the past and look
forward to reading more of them.