Will Murray's Pulp Classics #26 G-8 and His Battle Aces Audiobook #1: The Bat Staffel by Robert J. Hogan. Read by Doug Stone. Liner Notes by Will Murray.
They called G-8 the Flying Spy. History never recorded his exploits - and for good reason! No one would ever believe World War I was that wild!
G-8, the high-flying ace pilot of World War I, was born in the front seat of a car barreling through the Holland Tunnel. His father was Robert Jasper Hogan, who had made quite a name for himself as a prolific pulp writer specializing in aviation fiction during the glamorous era now styled Between the Wars. Among practitioners of that now-lost art, this school of writing was styled Yammering Guns, after the sound of contending synchronized machine guns in furious action.
It was the summer of 1933, and despite the Great Depression, Popular Publications was booming. Part of their Autumn expansion plans entailed launching The Spider, and a companion title to be aimed at the legions of readers who drank up fictionalized accounts of World War I Allied aces versus Imperial Germany's various bi-winged counts and barons, red and otherwise.
One of Popular's star writers, Hogan was doubtless the first writer publisher Harry Steeger considered when casting about for a suitable scribe. The unnamed magazine was on the schedule as a monthly. The designated author would have to know his rudders and ailerons - and be reliable. Hard drinkers need not apply. And Hogan had been an air cadet during World War I, although the armistice came before he could ship out and see action. Steeger and Hogan hashed out an idea. It was part Eddie Rickenbacker and part What Price Glory? - which was a popular Maxwell Anderson stage play turned into a motion picture. Price stressed the horrors of war as counterpoint to the sentimental comradeship of the Allies in the trenches. Only in this case, by horror, Popular Publications meant something far more horri...
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