Age of Aces Books » G-8 and his Battle Aces (2024)

Link - Posted by Davidon August 1, 2022 @ 6:00 amin

• History

BACK in 2015 we posted a bunch of correspondence between Henry Steeger, Robert J. Hogan, and Bob Swift that Pulp Historian Don Hutchison handed us at PulpFest. The letters with Bob Swift concerned a feature article he was writing for the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine. Although Don had given us the letters, the package did not include the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine feature story. But thanks to Newspapers.com, we have finally got a copy of it to share with our readers.

Without further ado, here is Bob Swift’s feature:

G-8: Spy King of the Pulps

by BOB SWIFT | The Miami Herald, Miami, Florida • 8 July 1962

Remember before TV, when the lurid pulp magazine was the boy’s best friend? Remember Bob Hogan’s fabulous heroes, G-8 and His Battle Aces?

ENTER the Depression era small town boy, bicycle-borne, legs pumping, frayed and faded school books bouncing in the bike basket, dime burning the clenched fist like a nugget of lye.

Past the candy store with its dubble-bubble. Past the movie with Hoot Gibson. Past the drug store and the root beer float. Here. The news stand. Padded clatter of Keds on the wooden floor. There. Row upon lurid row, garish and glorious, the pulp magazines of the 1930’s.

Were you a fan, back In those beautiful days when the pulp was king? It was before TV (what you did, you listened to I Love a Mystery, the Green Hornet and Jack Armstrong on the radios). And what you did, you read the pulps.

There was Doc Savage, the man of bronze; the Shadow, whose flaming automatics piled crooks like cordwood; Nick Carter, the master detective; the Spider, soaring on a silken web; Wild West Weekly and Western Story Magazine.

But what really made that school literature book a volume of tepid pap was a brassy book called G-8 and His Battle Aces, a seven by 10 inch pulp magazine whose contents palsied the hand, dried the mouth, popped the young eyeball and packed a bigger kick than a surreptitious Domino cigaret.

America’s Master Spy. who could pilot a Spad pursuit plane in circles around any World War I ace. Master of makeup, crack shot, superb physical specimen, noble and true, ruthless to the enemy. That was G-8 as created by Robert J. Hogan, one of the most prolific pulp writers of his day.

Robert J Hogan wasn’t just the communal pen name for some stable of writers who took turns writing some of the pulps of that era.

Hogan was—and is—Hogan. Today. Bob Hogan lives in Coral Gables, 829 Granada Grove Ct.

He fondly remembers his pulp hero.

“I love G-8.” says Hogan, a spare, balding man of 64. “G-8 was good to me, supported me for 11 years, built our summer home in New Jersey.”

Bob, a preacher’s son from Buskirk, NY, learned to fly in World War I, demonstrated private planes after that, found himself almost penniless when his company closed in the Depression’s early day. He happened to buy a pulp aviation magazine, snorted, “Hell. I can write better than that.” and did so. He sold his first story to Wings Magazine for $65, was off on a writing career.

“Does anyone remember a series called The Red Falcon?” wonders Hogan. “Or the Smoke Wade stories in Dare-Devil Aces magazine?”

But other pulp fiction publishers began turning to novel length stories featuring the same character each month . . . the Shadow, Doc Savage. Hogan’s chore: Dream up an air hero. Driving home from his publisher’s office one day in 1933. Hogan’s racing brain came up with G-8 and His Battle Aces.

There was G-8 himself, the Master Spy. There were his sidekicks, little Nippy Weston (”Hey, you dumb ox!”) and burly Bull Martin (”Holy herring!”) and Battle, their English butler.

That first novel was called The Bat Staffel, the latter being a German word meaning squadron. Then came the whole great series that ran from 1933 to 1944, a series of novels whose titles had a certain zing, such as: “Death Rides the Ceiling,” “Skies of Yellow Death,” “Patrol of the Mad,” “Scourge of the Steel Mask,” “Wings of the Juggernaut,” “Vultures Of the Purple Death,” “The Death Monsters,” “Wings of Invisible Doom,” or “The Staffel of Beasts.”

Imagination unlimited was the rule of the pulp magazines and G-8 fought monsters with tentacles, men with beast brains, flying zombies, marching skeletons, mad scientists, mysterious gas, flying bombs, monster tanks with spiked treads and flame throwers, armored dirigibles, magnetic rays.

Particular villains plagued G-8 for years. One was the horrifying Steel Mask. Another was the yellow peril, Dr. Chu Lung. But the adversary who gave G-8 the creeps the longest was the wretched evil genius, Herr Doktor Krueger:

“Emaciated beyond description . . . shrunken, half-paralyzed body . . . head huge at the top . . . ‘Ha, ha.’ cackled the little fiend doctor . . . a cackling, high-pitched laugh left the ugly mouth of Herr Doktor Krueger …”

And talk about television blood and mayhem! G-8 beat today’s fare by a gory mile. The Master Spy never got through an issue without shooting, stabbing or otherwise disposing of a dozen or so enemy pilots, soldiers, guards, spies, madmen or monsters.

How about this scene from “The Sword Staffel” of June, 1935:

“There was a sword covered with blood. It measured at least six feet in length . . . the handle was large and gripping it tightly was a ponderous, human arm. The flesh was seared like a half-broiled steak . . . it was severed at the shoulder as though it had been torn off.”

Whew! Heady stuff. And we loved it.

In one novel the mad scientists boiled bodies in cauldrons, sent zombie-like skeletons marching against the Allies.

“My editor became nauseated.” says Bob Hogan with some relish. “Had to leave his desk.”

There was “Wings of the Glacier Men,” wherein the Germans found a whole army of Vikings frozen in a glacier, brought them to life, used them as hideous soldiers.

Aerial combat played a big part in G-8’s adventures, too:

“G-8 was sure his bullets had spattered into the lead pilot’s body, but he was still flying. Instantly, G-8’s brain flashed to the time when Germany had sent over the gorilla men who could not be killed. Were these men wearing bullet proof armor, too? Tac-tac-tac! Spandeau bullets snapped past his head . . .”

Hogan wasted no time inventing complicated names for his foreign characters. He glibly tossed off handles like Monsieur Chapeau, Herr Schmaltz and Herr Butscher, injected a few ach du liebers and violas and went merrily on with the plot.

There was even a female spy with the lovely name of R-1. She was what you might call the love interest if you stretched a point, although romance in a G-8 novel was tailored to the tastes of the 14-year-old, with the result that any cuddling between G-8 and R-1 was roughly akin to that between Roy Rogers and Trigger.

No matter. When that G-8 novel was finished, the short stories digested and the G-8 Club news read (sometimes all this occurred by flashlight under the covers), it was time to begin the impatient waiting until next month’s issue.

Even the ads were wonderful. Johnson Smith & Co. offered courses in Ju Jitsu, Whoopee Cushions for a quarter. French Photo Rings and Boys. Boys, Learn to Throw Your Voice. Charles Atlas stared from the page and sneered. “You can have a body like mine.” You were entreated to buy yeast for those pesky pimples. And for the more mature reader, it is hoped, there was the ad for Crab Orchard Whisky, guaranteed a mellow 18 months old.

When G-8 was in his prime. Bob Hogan turned out 200,000 words a month, pacing his Sparta, N.J. home with the radio full blast, bouncing a rubber ball on the floor, dictating to two secretaries at once.

At one incredible time, Hogan was writing the G-8 series, a cops and robbers series called The Secret Six and a Chinese menace series called Wu Fang, each calling for a 60,000 word novel a month plus enough short stories to fill the back of each magazine. In addition, he ran the fan club (”Hello, gang, this is G-8 speaking.”).

A Readers Digest article called him one of the world’s most prolific writers.

Hogan’s orders were to turn out the copy. Don’t edit it, said his publisher, don’t rewrite it, don’t even read it. Just turn it out and mail it. And that’s just what Hogan did.

“I have yet to read a G-8 story,” he says with wry curiosity. “Wonder if they were any good?”

“G-8 was aimed at boys about 14 years old, but I had fans ail ages and all over the world. One was president of a street car company in Scotland. Another was a Bengal Lancer in India.’

Hogan still gets letters from old fans who wish their own kids could read G-8. But alas, that’s almost impossible. A mint copy which once sold for 10 cents might bring $50 today, if you could find one.

Hogan himself has a complete set of G-8 at his lodge in New Jersey, “The House That G-8 Built.” There, too, are Hogan’s mementos: airplane struts serving as curtain rods, engine parts for andirons, bomb casings for lamps.

G-8 appeared in about 1OO novels, finally died in World War II.

“Production costs killed the pulps.” sighs Hogan. “And, of course, in the day of the B-29 and radar, the demand for stories about Spads and the Kaiser sort of wore itself out.”

G-8 buried and mourned, Hogan turned to slick magazines, westerns, juveniles, TV. One of westerns became a movie, The Stand at Apache River. A juvenile novel, Howl at the Moon was considered a classic boy-dog story. Many of his books have been translated into foreign languages.

Hogan has slowed a bit lately. He and his wife Betty, winter in Coral Gables, summer in New Jersey. But the typewriter still clatters though the pace has relaxed. What Hogan would like to do now is re-issue G-8 in some form or other, for nostalgia fans maybe make G-8 a TV show.

We can hope so. In the meantime, go back in spirit to the hot summer day, the ceiling fan turning in the news stand, the rows of lurid covers, the swap of hand-heated coin for shiny book, the long walk home with open magazine, palpitating heart and great risk to life and limb.

Turn the pages slowly. Savor the deathless prose:

‘ . . . he knew a fiend had turned his pals into a Squadron of Living Death. He knew that the remedy lay in a will to fight and fight and fight . . . a low, vibrant chuckle left the lips of G-8 . . . the Master Spy shot his fist up in a signal to the Battle Aces . . . the Spad howled up in a steep climb . . . Fokkers thundered from the sky . . . tac-tac-tac! the machine guns clattered a hymn of hate . . . tac-tac-tac! tac-tac-tac!

• Download “G-8: Spy King of the Pulps” (8 July 1962, The Miami Herald Sunday Magazine)

Tags: 1962, Bob Swift, G-8 and his Battle Aces, July 1962, Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, Robert J. Hogan |Comments (0)

Link - Posted by Davidon April 15, 2021 @ 6:00 amin

• History

JUST as Popular Publications shut down their original air magazine Battle Aces in December 1932, leaving Dare-Devil Aces to shoulder the hopes and dreams of the air-minded reader, it launched a new magazine that same month—Battle Birds. Although neither Dare-Devil Aces or Battle Aces had a club associated with it, when Battle Birds started, the letters pages were already buzzing with talk of a Battle Birds Club to provide a forum for air-minded readers to share their hopes, dreams and knowledge with similar minded individuals. (Popular was quick to start a club for G-8 when Battle Aces was relaunched as G-8 and his Battle Aces in October 1933.)

The Battle Birds Club was open to all air-minded readers. Anyone could join by simply stating they wanted to and they would be sent a blue membership card. This card would display the members group-squadron-flight number, derived as follows: The country would be broken down into three regions—these three being the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Pursuit Groups—and a fourth, FL, for foreign readers classified in the ‘Foreign Legion’; each state a squadron number; and every 8 members within said state a lettered flight as they are recorded.

Several months in to the magazine’s publication, a wings pin fashioned after the letters page header was on offer. To obtain the wings pin, a member needed only to answer the question presented in the issue and send along 25¢.

a BATTLE BIRDS CLUB timeline

DECEMBER 1932

• Application for membership starts in first issue—wanting to know how air-minded the reader is and what he’d like to read about in the club pages

JANUARY 1933

• Discusses the division of the country into three groups—1st, 2nd and 3rd Pursuit groups. Your group number will be on your card.
• Foreign readers who join will be in the “Foreign Legion” and their cards will be marked with “F.L.” Each state a squadron number and every 8 members within said state a lettered flight as they are recorded.

FEBRUARY 1933

• First names of members are listed with addresses.

MARCH 1933

• The membership cards have all been printed and many have been sent out.
• More names in the honor roll of new selected members.
• Talk of figuring out a way whereby members can earn their wings!

APRIL 1933

• Membership cards are mentioned as being blue!
• A list of applicants who failed to include the town they’re from.
• More names for the honor roll.
• Still working on a way to earn your wings.

MAY 1933

• Asking the readers to write in yes or no if they’d be interested in a club pin.
• The usual listing of new members.

JUNE 1933

• Listing of new members—mostly from Cincinnati.
• Mentioned there are a lot of foreign readers from all parts of the world!

JULY 1933

• Listing of more new members.

AUGUST 1933

• The Pins are ready! They will be in the design of the club emblem (a shield with BB emblazed on it with wings) and cast from sterling silver. To earn the pin you must send in the correct answer to the question that issue along with 25¢. You can still earn your wings even if you haven’t recieved your card yet.
• First up: “What makes an airplane stay up?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

SEPTEMBER 1933

• Earn your Wings question: “What are the principle parts of a plane and what are they used for?
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

OCTOBER 1933

• Earn your Wings question: “What would be the first thing to do, and why, if your motor quit just after taking off?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

NOVEMBER 1933

• Earn your Wings question: “What are the three axes of a plane and where are they?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

DECEMBER 1933

• The pins are in the same design as that appearing at the top of the membership card and include a safety latch to prevent being lost.
• Earn your Wings question: “Why are superchargers used on altitude flights?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

JANUARY 1934

• A lot of membership cards sent out have been returned due to incorrect addresses.
• Earn your Wings question: “What is the advantage of an adjustable pitch ‘prop’?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

FEBRUARY 1934

• Still harping on the large number of returned cards due to incorrect addresses.
• Earn your Wings question: “If a man jumps from a plane going three hundred miles an hour and does not open his chute ’til he has fallen a mile (5,280 feet) how fast will he be going when he opens his chute?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

MARCH 1934

• A mention of the price of silver has jumped up from 30¢ an ounce to over a $1.25. They DID buy quite a few of the sterling pins a few months ago when silver was a lot less than it is now so they can still give out pins for about what they cost them.
• Earn your Wings question: “Why is glider flying the ideal preliminary step to power plane piloting?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

APRIL 1934

• “The Skipper” says he has to sign a couple thousand more membership cards for new members.
• Earn your Wings question: “How do dirigibles make up the weight lost by the gasoline being burned away in the engines?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

MAY 1934

• The pins are described as such: “These pins are exact duplicates of the insignia that appears at the head of the department and upon your membership cards. Fitted with a safety clasp to prevent loss, and finished in the new dull manner, they are about the best looking club pins we have ever seen.”
• Earn your Wings question: “Does the breeze behind a propeller increase with its speed, no matter how fast it travels?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

JUNE 1934

• (FINAL ISSUE) Still taking applications for membership!
• Earn your Wings question: “When, where and by whom was the first balloon used in warfare?”
• More names on the Honor Roll of New Members.

WITH the July Issue, BATTLE BIRDS changes it’s name to DUSTY AYRES and his BATTLE BIRDS and it’s focus. The lead story will now feature the exploits of Dusty Ayres and his Battle Birds and what could happen in a possible future war. The Battle Bird Club continues, but will now be known as the Hanger Flying Club although new pins will not be produced. All previous members of the Battle Birds Club are automatically members of this new club. The new club’s focus is on being prepared for any future wars that may arise. New members can still aquire a Battle Birds wings pin for 25¢ if so desired—but the feeling in your heart is more important than a pin on your chest!

JULY 1934

• The letters page now run by The Skipper (Sid Bowen) is titled HANGER FLYING (also the name of the new club)
• The first column discusses the “war in the future” which is the setting for the Dusty Ayres tales. All readers should be prepared if and when this war should come.
• “Of course, all the fellows who are members of the old Battle Birds club, automatically become members of this new club that is dedicated to national preparedness for the safety of our country If you have a B.B. pin, be sure to wear it, because it signifies that you’re a real American and ready to do all you can to preserve all the things that we Americans hold closest tour hearts. Those of you who haven’t a pin and want one, just send in your request and twenty-five cents to the skipper, and I’ll make darn sure that you’ll get one by return mail. But listen fellows, just one more thing before I close up; a pin is a pin and it doesn’t mean a thing if there isn’t the thought behind it. It’s the true feeling in your heart that counts, wether you wear the club pin or not.

AUGUST 1934

• No mention of the club or pin in the HANGER FLYING column.
• You can get the previous issue for 20¢ (with 5¢ for postage)

SEPTEMBER 1934

• Readers have been sending in requests for Mr. Blakeslee and the skipper to dope out three-view drawings of the Silver Flash and the Dart, but the request is turned back on the readers to send in their own three-view drawings of Dusty’s ships.
• Some readers have already crafted models of said planes—if you have, by all means send in a photo of your model.
• reiterates that members of the old club are definitely members of the new club. To join just let the skipper know you want to join, and if you want a club pin just send in 25¢ in cash or stamps.
• The skipper says: “Very soon I’m going to have some new HANGER FLYING CLUB membership cards printed. They will be free to whoever wants one. When they’re ready I’ll let you know, and you can then let me know if you want one.
• “But as I said at the very beginning of these meetings, a pin or a membership card does not mean a thing if the spirit isn’t right there in the old heart. We are pledging ourselves to do everything possible for ever-lasting peace, happiness and prosperity for the peoples of this wonderful country of ours—the greatest in all the wide world. And if we keep that thought close to our hearts every minute of the day, it doesn’t matter how many pins we wear, or how many membership cards we carry around.”

OCTOBER 1934

• The skipper says the lads write all the time inquiring after the club—it’s just 25¢ cash or stamps (to cover the cost of the pin) to Skipper Sid Bowen, Popular Publications, Inc., 205 East 2nd Street, New York, New York
• Says the Battle Birds club has been thriving for a long time, and anyone who joined it before Dusty Ayres yarns appeared is still a member
• Skipper says, “I’ve got swell plans for the club, that I hope to get underway tan early date.”

NOVEMBER 1934

• No real mention of the club aside from a reference to the silver wings. A reader writes in: “Why not have cloth wings of red, white and blue? Make them out of the material that high school letters are made of. Make them three inches long and two inches wide.”
• The Skipper (Sid Bowen) writes: “There it is. Do you agree with Ed, or are the silver wings we have now, okay? Mull it over and let’s hear what you think.”
• Also a mention to send in your plane designs and the Skipper and Mr Blakeslee will look them over and use one in the story—maybe even on the cover. Design credit will be given!

DECEMBER 1934

• Asks readers if they’d like to see some female characters added to the stories.
• Apologizes for the club membership cards not being ready yet!
• “It has been suggested that since the old Battle Birds club was divided up into squadrons, the same should be done with the Dusty Ayres gang. If chaps in your neighborhood want to form a Dusty Ayres Group, just send in your names, and I’ll put them in the very next Hanger Flying Department. To each Group can be attached the name of the city or town where you lads live. Or if you wish you can have a number instead of a name. Work it out thought, you lads who were in the old club—in squadrons, etc—can just simply make it a Dusty Ayres Group.”
• Reader’s three view plans of the Silver Flash

JANUARY 1935

• Some readers have expressed a desire to have a model company make models of the Silver Flash to sell. The Skipper doesn’t mind, but thinks readers would want to make their own. But he’ll look into getting it done if there’s enough interest.
• A reader inquires about a flying course in the magazine. The Skippers says he did that once (Sky Fighters) and it was even published as a book.
• Reader’s three view plans of the Silver Flash

FEBRUARY 1935

• Several lads have had their 25¢ club pins returned by the post office due to bad addresses.
• A list of readers who’d like to hear from other Dusty Ayres fans. (Pen Pals)
• The Skipper (Sid Bowen) addresses the matter of club pins and membership cards: “The membership card is free to anybody who wants to join. Simply let me know and I’ll send you one. If you want the club pin you can have one by sending in twenty-five cents in cash or stamps. But—and get this—owning a club pin does not mean you are a better member than a chap with simply the membership card. The Skipper writes Dusty yarns—he’s not in the pin business. We have pins only because a lot of the fellows wanted one to wear.”
• Reader’s three view plans of the Ships of the Future (2 pgs)

MARCH 1935

• Fred Blakeslee has just returned from a swell vacation and will resume his art duties next month.
• Please ink your plane designs for better reproduction.
• A list of readers who’d like to hear from other Dusty Ayres fans (Pen Pals)
• Reader’s three view plans of the Ships of the Future (2pgs)

APRIL 1935

• Be sure to send in your plane designs in ink—Fred Blakeslee doesn’t have the time to do it for you
• A list of readers who’d like to hear from other Dusty Ayres fans (Pen Pals)
• Reader’s three view plans of the Ships of the Future (3pgs)

MAY/JUNE 1935

• The skipper suggests writing to your local radio station if you’d like to hear Dusty in yarns written for the radio.
• A list of readers who’d like to hear from other Dusty Ayres fans (Pen Pals)
• Reader’s three view plans of the Ships of the Future (4pgs)
• a ”certificate of truth” is printed on the letters page to send in with your drawings stating you are the artist.

JULY/AUGUST 1935

• No mention of the club, cards or pins.
• A list of readers who’d like to hear from other Dusty Ayres fans (Pen Pals)
• Reader’s three view plans of the Ships of the Future (5pgs)
• The Skipper acknowledges that this is the last issue but keep those Dusty clubs going!

The club does not pick up when the magazine resumes publication as BATTLE BIRDS in 1940.

Tags: Battle Aces, Battle Birds, Dare-Devil Aces, Dusty Ayres and his Battle Birds, G-8 and his Battle Aces, premiums |Comments (0)

Link - Posted by Davidon January 29, 2015 @ 6:00 amin

• History

A few years ago, writer and frequent Age of Aces contributer Don Hutchison came up to our table at PulpFest and handed us a manilla envelope, entrusting us with its contents. When we opened the envelope, there were correspondence between Robert Hogan and Henry Steeger and a copy of the Newton, New Jersey Sunday Herald from October 21st, 1962.

While we don’t have a copy of Bob Swift’s G-8 homage that ran in the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine on July 8th, 1962, we do have an article on Robert J. Hogan that ran in his local paper, the Newton, NJ Sunday Herald in October of 1962. We posted the article—“Lurid Plots Hatched In Sussex Boro”—back in October. What follows is the correspondence between Robert J. Hogan and Henry Steeger in regard to this article. . .

October 22, 1962

Dear Harry:

Seemed to us the editors did a specially fine job on the local story of G-8. See pages 6 and 7 of our little Sunday Section inclosed. I’m sending a couple of copies in case you might want to send one around to agencies or whatever. If you should want more of this or the Sunday Magazine of the July 8th Miami Herald let me know and I’ll get you more.

Seems as if we might interest some soft cover publisher into trying one printing of a G-8. We could offer it with no cost to him and the use of the cover painting for the cover of the book. We could take our royalties later, if any, so the soft cover publisher wouldn’t be losing any advance money that the first try didn’t earn. If we were going to be north longer I’d take these two G-8 writeups and see what I could do canvassing the various soft cover markets. But we’re starting south in a few days. Betty’s father is worse and we want to get down nearby where we can help out.

Since we’ll be on the move by the time you receive this, I’m giving you the address of the Hogan shanty in Coral Gables.

Sorry we didn’t get together while we were north, but maybe next time, let’s hope.

Best,
Robert J. Hogan

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

October 30, 1962

Dear Bob:

I was certainly surprised to see the article about our good friend G-8 in the New Jersey Sunday Herald. Even though the first World War is a long distance away, G-8 still flies all over the place. Thanks so much for sending me the two copies. I enjoyed reading the article immensely.

It would be great if we could find some soft cover publisher who would like to try a printing of G-8. It certainly would be OK with me, Bob, if you know such a publisher. I don’t believe I have any friends in this particular field.

I’m so sorry we didn’t have the opportunity of getting 
together for a bull fest. It would have been grand to 
see you, and I can tell from the photographs in the
 Sunday Herald that you look exactly the same as you al
ways did. I was most disappointed to find out you had
 been at the office while I was away. Let’s try to arrange a meeting next time you move north.

Here’s all the best to you and Betty,

Berkely Medalion would eventually publish a series of 8 G-8 and His Battle Aces unabridged paperbacks from 1969 through 1971—the first three with new cover art by Jim Steranko.

Tags: 1962, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Henry Steeger, October 1962, Robert J. Hogan |Comments (1)

Link - Posted by Davidon January 28, 2015 @ 6:00 amin

• History

A few years ago, writer and frequent Age of Aces contributer Don Hutchison came up to our table at PulpFest and handed us a manilla envelope, entrusting us with its contents. When we opened the envelope, amung other things, there were letters from Robert Hogan to Harry Steeger and back again.

The correspondence continues. Bob Swift’s G-8 piece has been published in the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine Sunday July 8th, 1962. (Steeger did not include a copy of the article with his correspondence files and we have been unable to get a hold of a copy of this article otherwise). . .

July 12, 1962

Dear Harry:

The G-8 piece finally came out and we all feel it was well worth waiting for. I saw Bob Swift yesterday and he said hed sent you a copy and returned the G-8 magazines you had sent him. So you should see it for yourself if you haven’t already.

Bob Swift feels very strongly that G-8 should be a TV series and so do we all, of course. They’ve had about every type now except the World War One flying stuff and G-8 should do it well. I think if j:e could get a piece like this or this piece itself or an enlargement of this G-8 piece in a national magazine we might be on our way to the TV moneybags.

We’re heading north July 26th so we’ll be there during August and probably the fall and hope I can drop in for a hello when we get into New York.

A chance came along to rent our home down here to some nice folks until November 1st. They had to get in right off so we’ve taken an apartment here where we’ve been on similar occasions. Third floor and nice and cool.

If you write after the 26th of this month better address us at our old stand:
Box 248
Sparta
New Jersey

Best,
Robert J. Hogan

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

July 16, 1962

Dear Bob:

I enjoyed hearing from you. It’s good to know that the G-8 piece finally came out and I shall look forward to having a gander at it. So far it hasn’t arrived.

We’d have great fun with, a G-8 TV shov and it’s a tribute you certainly deserve. I’ll keep ay finders crossed that something will happen.

I’m in New York City during the week during the summer and out on the Island for weekends. It’s nice and cool out there, but I remember from the past that you said Florida was comfortable even in the summertime.

Hope to say hello to you one of these days.

Best,

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

And to Bob Swift at the Miami Herald:

July 18, 1962

Dear Bob:

That’s a great article! I got such a kick out of it that I practically drooled nostalgia all over my desk.

The Miami Herald Sunday Magazine and your letter arrived just a few minutes ago and I read each of them immediately. You did the job to perfection and I congratulate you for having captured so well all the delights and joys of a 14-year-old’s heart. I know Bob Hogan himself enjoyed your article very much because I had a letter from him yesterday in which he told me about it. I hope it gets around to all the places where it will do the most good. If Bob could sell a TV show from it, he would indeed be a very happy feller.

I am glad you had such gratifying results from the story. I started publishing as soon as I was out of school and G-8 was one of the first publications. In about 3 years from the standing start we had the largest pulp magazine house in New York – and we were still in our 20’s. In fact, we eacj borrowed $5,000 to get it started, and no one ever had it so good as did we during the war! After that, rising costs killed off the pulp market and people became interested in a more ritzy product. It took us several years to get ARGOSY really rolling and each issue costs anywhere from 30 to 50 times what a pulp magazine would have set us back.

I wonder if it would be possible for you to send me 2 more copies of the Sunday Magazine. I’d like to send one to John Fleming Gould, illustrator for the G-8 stories, because he, too, enjoyed doing this work so much. I’d like to send the second one to a New York advertising agency in the hope that some interest might be sparked for a TV show.

Thanks for sending back the copies of G-8 and His Battle Aces – and good luck.

Regards,

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

Dear Harry:

Here are a oouple more issues of the magazine. Hope John Gould enjoys seeing his old stuff in print again. Bob Hogan is probably en route north by now so expect you’ll see him shortly. I hope either you or Bob will let me know if you do anything further with G-8, in print or on TV.

Regards,
Bob Swift

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

August 9, 1962

Dear Bob:

Many thanks for sending along the two copies of G-8. I’ll use them where they’ll do the most good, I hope, and if there are any TV or other offers I’ll keep you advised.

Kindest regards.

Sincerely,

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

And to Edward J. Degray of Degray & Associates:

August 9, 1962

Dear Ed:

I have a possibility in mind for a TV show. It may be remote and unusable, but you are the guy to judge. It’s concerned with an old magazine we published called “G-8 And His Battle Aces”. This was pure kid stuff but it appealed to kids all oyer the United States and, like the Model A Ford, copies of G-8 are now selling for 50 bucks apiece.

The author wrote me recently, saying there had been some talk of a TV show and, as usual, the letters TV brought you immediately to mind. I have an article from the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine telling all about G-8 And His Battle Aces – and if you’d like to have a gander at it, please let me know and I’ll shoot it along.

Kindest regards.

Sincerely,

As far as we’ve been able to assertain, a possible G-8 and his Battle Aces tv show never got beyond the talking stage. Sadly, Robert J. Hogan would pass away the following year

Tags: 1962, August 1962, Bob Swift, Edward Degray, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Henry Steeger, John Fleming Gould, July 1962, Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, Robert J. Hogan |Comments (0)

Link - Posted by Davidon January 27, 2015 @ 6:00 amin

• History

A few years ago, writer and frequent Age of Aces contributer Don Hutchison came up to our table at PulpFest and handed us a manilla envelope, entrusting us with its contents. When we opened the envelope, amung other things, there were letters from Robert Hogan to Harry Steeger and back again.

The correspondence continues but this time with a series of memorandums between Henry Steeger and Bob Swift, editor of the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, as he prepares to publish the article on Robert J. Hogan and G-8 and his Battle Aces. . .

Feb. 17, 1962

Dear Mr. Steeger:

Sorry to be so late returning your file copy of g-8, but my color lab people kept experimenting to see if they could get a better reproduction of the cover.

I’m just about set to go with the story about B0b Hogan. But first, can I impose on you to send me a few more copies of G-8? I really would like to quote from more than one novel and use illustrations from several books if I can. Besides, I’d like to read the damned things. They take me back, with all that jazz about Spandaus and tarmac and ach du liebers.

Thanks again for your help.

Sinceraly,
Bob Swift, Editor
Sunday Magazine

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

February 26, 1962

Dear Mr. Swift:

I got quite a kick out of going through that copy of G-8 myself. I’ll try to dig up a few mora for you and shoot them along. I’d appreciate it if you’d return them to me when you’ve finished with them so that we can restore them to the files.

I’ll be looking forward to your article.

Sincerely,

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

March 13, 1962

Dear Mr. Swift:

Thanks for returning the June 1935 issue of G-8 AHD HIS BATTLE ACES.

We’ve dug up three more issues – October, November and December 1936 – and these are enclosed, You can shoot them back when you’ve finished with them.

Sincerely,

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

July 11, 1962

Dear Harry:

Here are your copies of G-8, and I must say I return them with great regret. There’s a great deal of nostalgia about the pulps and I mourn their passing, as you may gather from my story about Bob Hogan and G-8.

The response to the story has been gratifying, with a great deal of comment from balding, bespectacled guys in their 30’s and early 40’s. Most of that comment concerns the nostalgia they felt for the old days in the small towns, journeying to drug store or news stand for G-8 and all the other pulps, the whole flavor of being 10 or 14 or so during that era.

Actually, I cheated a little. I was only four years old when G-8 first appeared and didn’t actually pick up on him until about 1939 or 1940. But I made up for it by buying all the old copies I could find in the second hand book stores.

Anyway, thanks for your help and patience. By the way, if you’d like to run a story about Hogan and G-8 in one of your present books I’d like the assignment. Perhaps a similar story?

Regards,
Bob Swift

Tags: 1962, Bob Swift, February 1962, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Henry Steeger, July 1962, March 1962, Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, Robert J. Hogan |Comments (0)

Link - Posted by Davidon January 23, 2015 @ 6:00 amin

• History

A few years ago, writer and frequent Age of Aces contributer Don Hutchison came up to our table at PulpFest and handed us a manilla envelope, entrusting us with its contents. When we opened the envelope, amung other things, there were letters from Robert Hogan to Harry Steeger and back again.

The correspondence continues . . .

Feb. 3, 1962

Dear Harry:

It was so nice to heer the enthusiastic agreement with our 50-50 idea on good old G-8. We’re working on it. Betty came up with an idea a while ago. She said it seemed that Walt Disney would be the only outfit on the coast or anywhere to do justice to G-8 if he came back for movies and/or TV. Betty always was the brains of our family and that proves it. Of course, Disney, when the time is right. I believe this is something that needs care and good, Efceajiy buildup (if we live so long) if we can get the idea off the ground at all. But strange things happen. Sax Rohmer’s brother-in-law is a friend of ours down here. Bill said some outfit paid Sax $4,000,000 for all rights to Fu Manchu not long before his death and the old Chinaman had been outmoded and outdated for many years. TV is a hungry monster and no telling which ways the giant jaws may snap. Certainly not our way, likely, but it’s just as well to be prepared.

I liked the way Erle Gardner handled Perry Mason for TV. Of course we haven’t got a Perry Mason but the approach (and it does seem we do have a sizeable ready-made audience), seems to me, should be the same, slowly and carefully until we get things right. I could use a little or a lot of money myself at this or any time (who couldn’t) but not to the extent that we have to make a quick sale at sacrifice to a well done product. Last night I watched the rehash of the 1946 spy movie 13 Rue Madeleine on our TV. The review said it was GOOD. I decided after watching it that some of the old G-8s could show Madelein some real suspense. Kind of got me itching to get things going. Anyway, we’ll see.

I’m writing mainly to say thanks and to give you our new temperary address. Don’t feel you must answer this, but any ideas are always welcome. We’ve rented out Coral Gables shanty till April 10th to some nice folks (we hope) from Darien, Conn. So we’re very comfortable near Betty’s folks In a one bedroom apartment where we’ve spent two winters before this, secomd floor overlooking a lovely garden, coconut palms, avacado and grapefruit trees outside the window and such. And right now it’s in the mid 70s. How about you and Shirley coming on down? We’ve got the big, old Chrysler to get around in.

Bob Swift of the Herald Sunday Magazine said last time I talked to him that the photo lab hasn’t brought down your G-8 mad yet. Soon as they do he’ll return it to you. Meantime, he’s slated the article for Sunday magazine early in March.

Best,
Robert J. Hogan

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

February 5, 1962

Dear Bob:

Let’s all Keep our fingers crossed that G-8 hits the TV screens!

It was good to hear from you again – and let’s hope a sale is made. I agree with you that G-8 could show many of these programs some real suspense.

Be sure to send me a copy of the Herald Sunday Magazine when G-8 makes his bow early in March.

Wish we could get down to see you, but Shirl and the kids and I usually go north to ski during the winter time.

Your set-up sounds terrific and I can lmaglne life must really be pleasant in your Florida home.

Best,

The Miami Herald Sunday Magazine feature on Robert J. Hogan and G-8 and his Battle Aces would not see print until July of 1962. Our correspondence picks up next week with notes between Bob Swift and Henry Steeger.

Tags: 1962, Bob Swift, Disney, Erle Stanley Gardner, February 1962, Fu Manchu, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Henry Steeger, Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, Perry Mason, Robert J. Hogan, Sax Rohmer |Comments (0)

Link - Posted by Davidon January 22, 2015 @ 6:00 amin

• History

A few years ago, writer and frequent Age of Aces contributer Don Hutchison came up to our table at PulpFest and handed us a manilla envelope, entrusting us with its contents. When we opened the envelope, amung other things, there were letters from Robert Hogan to Harry Steeger and back again.

Responding to Steeger’s letter of the 11th, Hogan fills Steeger in on the interview with Bob Swift for the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine and talk of the rights structure to the G-8 stories and the possibility of a G-8 television show. . .

January 22, 1962

Dear Harry:

So good to get your letter of December 11th. Thanks for your congrats and your always kind words.

We’ve had the interview with Bob Swift, Editor of the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, and photographer. Also met Jim Eussell, Business and financial Editor of the Herald, who as a Louisiana boy had G-8 mania. These G-8 fans I’ve met and heard from in recent years are a high-type bunch of guys, literate and respected. Fact, I’ve never met or heard from a G-8 reader who didn’t seem someone to be proud of. The G-8 interview, with pictures, was supposed to consume about an hour last Tuesday afternoon. It consumed 3½ hours Instead, and two days later Bob Swift talked for an hour and a half on the phone, all of which I enjoyed, of course.

Bob is returning the magazine you sent him as soon as the photo lab at the Herald gets squared away for their color print from the cover. Then, I believe, he hopes to ask you for several more to choose typical passages from for the article. Also, he said, “I’d read every one if I could get them again.” That seemed to me a fantastic angle. Bob read G-8s as a boy. Now he’s editor of one of the largest magazine Sunday supplements in the country and still likes to read them. He said he enjoyed reading the novel you sent him just as much as when he was a kid. Said, as before, he couldn’t lay it down.

That seems to be the opinion of others who have grown to positions of responsibility. A letter arrived the other day from an old reader who got our Coral Gables address from a recent SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. It was written on the stationary of one of the larger Madison Avenue advertising agencies and he signed himself; “Executive Producer Radio-TV Programming Department.” I’d like to think it’s a feeler for some use of G-8 in either of his mediums, but more than likely not. Anyway, it could be a wedge. He says, in part: “With regard to G-8, I would certainly like to see more of this kind of reading for my boy who is just about the age I was when I was first Introduced to our hero.” He also said he deplored a lack of back copies of the magazine and was trying to think of some way to get the past ones reprinted possibly as paperbacks. He went on about settling a little bet with another G-8 fan as to whether there was ever a woman villain in any of the G-8 stories. He ended the letter: “With many thanks again for everything you have done for us indirectly —-” There must be some smoke behind all these little signal fires, which might be to our advantage if handled correctly.

You mentioned in your letter, Harry, that you had no sales set-up for a G-8 renaissance and suggested I try selling G-8 to one or several mediums. So far as adapting or scripting any of the old stories for TV or whatever, I’ve never done a script although my/stuff has sold to TV in GE and Loretta Young and to the movies, all of which was adapted in the studios, the only thing I might help out in, beside sales, would be in an advisory capacity. I’m also afraid any efforts to write new G-8 stories would lack the old zing of twenty or more years ago. Anyway, there were a hundred odd old stories, which the old readers have forgotten and, according to their many expressions of hope, would like to read over again in newly published paperback editions. Also new reader possibilities.

I’ve thought of the autobiographical book I mentioned in my other letter (a backward look at the old pulp days with a G-8 novel added) as a possible build-up to a string of republished G-8 paperbacks, if we could sell the idea to any of the paperback publishers. This might eventually lead to the sale for TV. In any event, it Is a very long shot in the dark. However, with all the furor the old readers have whipped up, particularly in the nation-wide organization known as “The Society of World War I Aero Historians,” which boasts a pretty impressive membership of successful young executives, including the advertising guys I mentioned, something might go.

Betty’s father, Vic Lambdin, lives near us. He, my father-in-law, has been political cartoonist and newspaper man all his life (now retired). He says this thing busting out as a feature in the Miami Herald Sunday Magazine could very well bring what is needed to set off G-8 as a big thing. Turns out there are upwards of 5,000,000 readers of the Sunday Magazine down here at this time of year, with Florida loaded at the peak with what some laughingly call “the nation’s most important people.” Vic says they’re likely to burn up the Hogan phone with various offers or whatever. I don’t count on it, but it would be fun up to a point and, If so, it would be well to be prepared. With that in mind, it seems that maybe we should have some better idea of rights, mine and yours, in this thing.

Here is the way I recollect the G-8 set-up as to ownership. I remember near the start you told me it was understood that the magazine was yours. As long as I wanted to and/or could write the G-8 stories, that was fine. But if anything happened to me, you wanted Betty to understand that you would have to get someone else to write it under Robert J. Hogan. Of course we agreed.

As to the rights to all stories I wrote for you, at first you purchased only first serial rights. Then, because some writers were selling second serial rights to competing magazines, you bought all serial rights. At the time you explained this to me, you said that at any time I had legitimate sales for my writing to mediums other than competing magazines you would release the rights back to me.

So, from the above, you own the magazine and I own the story rights. Now it seems to me with the bare possibility of something some day coming of this G-8 furor in paperbacks, TV, radio or whatever, there could be overlapping of rights and interests here and there. Also, we’ve always had the best relations with each other, Harry, and never a line of written contract. It seems to Betty and me that the best way to handle this, for all concerned and our joint good, would be on a fifty-fifty basis on all past G-8 stuff. If G-8 went into paperbacks I would like to write a forward for each, telling how that particular story came to be written and how I got the idea for that menace or war machine which seems to be the main part that the old readers still go nuts over. That would be part of our joint paperback sales, if any.

In other words, whatever we could make out of old G-8 we would split the gross take, you and I, fifty-fifty. We might need an agent, but so far we have never needed one, and if contracts required a careful check, your Popular Publications attorney might take care of it.

There probably isn’t a chance in the world that this G-8 comeback will amount to anything. However, some crazy things are happening these days. And wouldn’t it be fun to see the old boy diving in again with Nippy and Bull flying wing in Spads 13 and 7?

If this idea is agreeable with you—the feature story is due out in a week or two—would it be well for Bob Swift to mention in the article that the G-8 stories, series or whatever, are being submitted or negotiated for paperback and/or TV? How would you suggest wording it on the chance of raising some interest?

Our best to you and yours, Harry.
Robert J. Hogan

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

January 25, 1962

Dear Bob:

Needless to say, I enjoyed your letter of January 22nd very much. It was nice to hear from you and it was good news that the popular demand for a return of G-8 and his Battle Aces appears to be growing.

I think your idea for a fifty-fifty split on possible sales is very fair and I agree with your letter in every respect. Since I agree completely, I am sure it won’t be necessary for me to requote these points.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a pocketbook of G-8 stories or a television program? I’m sure that either one would be a real success. In fact, just the reading of your letter made me feel nostalgic again about Nippy and Bull.

Here’s wishing us luck, Bob – and my kindest personal regards to you and the family.

Sincerely.

Tags: 1962, Bob Swift, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Henry Steeger, January 1962, Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, Robert J. Hogan |Comments (11)

Link - Posted by Davidon January 16, 2015 @ 8:00 amin

• History

A few years ago, writer and frequent Age of Aces contributer Don Hutchison came up to our table at PulpFest and handed us a manilla envelope, entrusting us with its contents. When we opened the envelope, amung other things, there were letters from Robert Hogan to Harry Steeger and back again.

On December 7th, 1961, prompted by the growing nostagia over World War I and G-8 and his Battle Aces in particular, Robert J. Hogan took the time to write to his old publisher and friend Harry Steeger. . .

December 7, 1961

Dear Harry:

For some time I’ve been going to drop you a line on the matter of an old friend. Tempus fidgets and none of us is getting younger, except one old geezer who seems to be looming out of the past to haunt me, bless him. He, according to books, mailed reports, phone calls and magazines articles, seems to be growing younger and it does me good to think that I gave birth to this full sized adult who, defying the laws of Nature and Biology, seems to be gradually taking a second hold on life. Namely good old G-8 and His Battle Aces.

I received my first inkle of this shot in the arm for the old boy perhaps three years, yes? over three years ago, when a guy phoned me long distance from somewhere to tell me how much he used to enjoy G-8 and to ask me if I had any copies of G-8 magazines I would care to part with. I said I had none for sale or loan but that I did love his flattery. He went on to say that he had been trying to buy some old back copies of G-8 and recently had been offered a brace of three, without covers, but assured that the first page of contents was there WITH THE AUTHOR’S NAME visible. The back number mag merchant would part with these three for the meager price of $7.00 for the three. He said he had asked what he might get one or more with covers and in good condition for and was told that if such a rare item could be found anywhere they would run from $10. each up and up and up. That was well over 3 years ago.

A year ago Betty picked up a well written contemperary paper back novel wherein some guy was sounding off on “My country right or wrong,” after which he apologized by saying, “Damned if I don’t sound like G-8 and his Battle Aces.” Then continued a few sentences of dialogue something like, “Damned if you don’t look like G-8,” and “Wasn’t that the best damned set of character stories that ever hit print?” etc. etc.

Next thing, one of the boys in the Sparta PO said someone had come through asking where the house of Robert J. Hogan was. Said he wanted to see where G-8 stories were written. This was nearly 15 years after publication was suspended.

I’ve had the general run of pleasant flattery all the way. But a few months ago the magazine section of the Miami Sunday Herald came out with a piece about World War I planes and the furor that is now cooked up. Mel Torme, the singer, is head of a club, as you likely know, who hold a kind of worship for World War I fliers and planes and who make a thing of collecting G-8 and his Battle Aces magazines. This article referred to G-8 as a fast returning popular character. I phoned the editor of the mag section and asked him, a nice guy named Bob Swift, how come he had mentioned G-8. He said, “Because it’s the hottest thing in present day collectors’ items. I read it, every issue, when I was a kid. Used to sit on the curb in front of the mag store where I bought it because I couldn’t wait to get home to read it.”

The upshot of all this is that he wants to run a piece on ye old creator and writer of G-8 and His Battle Aces. I told him I had nothing on G-8 down here with me. He said he would write you and ask if you might have an old proof sheet or something you could send him of one of the old cover prints. He wants to do a special in full color in the Sunday mag. No doubt you have heard from him by now.

On top of that comes an article in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED? October 30th 1961 issue, by Robert H. Boyle, titled HELL’S OLD ANGELS. On page 61 on and on under the paragraph head THE FLYING SPY he does some nice stuff on old G-8 and says that Hollywood and other sources are now probing the possibilities of making TV series out of World War I stuff and—well you can read it. You’ll get a kick out of it, I know.

Wouldn’t it be something if they saw a good TV series in G-8 and His Battle Aces? I know that if or when G-8 sells to TV or whatever interests, you’ll see to it that they make fitting payment to the guy who originated and wrote the series. Believe me, we can use it.

For now, I’m writing about another angle of this new G-8 popularity. Because of this furor that seems to have been growing over G-8, bless his handsome heart and diary, I’m planning to do a sort of autobiographical book about the old pulp days as I knew them and the development of said G-8 and His Battle Aces and how they grew. So many amazing and Interesting things connected with the writing of the magazine and the pulps in general. Why and how come practically every owner of a seat on the NY stock exchange came to read G-8 and His Battle Aces, a magazine aimed at age 14 I believe you said, and never missed a copy during the 30s. The fun we had writing for the pulps and the funny things that came up from the thousands of letters we received from fans all over the world. And I’m hoping I could have your permission (when I get the autobiog. part done) to publish one of the G-8 novels at the conclusion of the book, with illustrations, cover and all. At least some arrangement so any cost for such rights, if any, wouldn’t come out of me and my royalties.

Best to Al Norton, Eva, Peg and any others of the old bunch who may still be about. And the best of the best to you, Harry. It’s beginning to look like we created an era that may live for some time in the memory of the old G-8 readers. How many total readers, would you guess, G-8 really had during the years? Seems about every young man I’ve ever talked to of that age range read the mag at some time.

Yours,
Robert J. Hogan

— ✪ ✪ ✪ —

December 11, 1961

Dear Bob:

I can’t tell you what a big kick I got out of your letter of December 7th. It’s been a long time since we exchanged letters, and I’ve often wondered how you were doing.

One of my chief regrets has been the demise of the pulp magazines. I thought they were great fun and G-8 was one of the best. I, too, have noticed the resurgence of popularity for G-8 and have seen his name mentioned even in newspaper pieces and magazine articles not mentioned in your letter. He must have struck a tremendous note of popularity which even we were not quite aware of. I was fascinated to read all of the listings made by you of his recent appearances. The old boy had a lot of fight in the beginning and he still has a lot of fight in him. More congratulations and felicitations to you, Bob. You did a magnificent job and you brought great happiness to what looks like all the kids of America. Certainly a large percentage of them.

As you know, World War I planes are still very popular. People like to collect them and to look at them, much the same as old automobiles. They also like articles on old planes. Each time we’ve run an article in ARG0SY on old planes it has been extremely popular.

Yes, I think a good TV series on G-8 and his Battle Aces would be quite some thing. Maybe you could sell some breakfast food company on the idea. There would certainly be no better person to write it than your noble self. However, we do not have any salesmen in this particular realm and, hence, could make no effort on our parts toward selling the property.

An autobiographical book about the old pulp days would be most amuslng and I think quite a collector’s item. If you do it, I’m sure you would please many readers. If there is any way in which we can help, just call on us.

It would be hard to guess how many total readers we had for G-8 during the years because, as you know, kids love to pass copies of the magazine around—so that each magazine could have had anywhere from 1 to 10 readers. In any event, it was a mighty large number.

I am so glad for you and for us—but particularly you—that this resurgence of popularity has occurred. You certainly deserved it and we had a grand time putting the product together!

All the best to you and your family, Bob.

Tags: 1961, Bob Swift, December 1961, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Henry Steeger, Miami Herald Sunday Magazine, Robert J. Hogan |Comments (0)

Link - Posted by Davidon January 14, 2015 @ 12:00 pmin

• History

In October of 1961, Sports Illustrated ran an article on the emerging hobby of collecting Spads, Nieuports and other real live airplanes from World War I. The article centers mainly around collectors Paul Mantz and Cole Palen, but it does mention the interest surrounding The Great War that was growing at the time with interst being shown by book publishers and movie and television producers. With a mention towards America’s number one World War flying Ace—G-8!

The Playing Skies of World War I

by Robert H. Boyle (Sports Illustrated, 30 October 1961 (vol.15 no.18))

Every age in history has its admirers. Raymond Duncan, the dancer, wears a homespun tunic and longs for the glory that was Greece. The late Sol Bloom, Congressman, loved nothing more than to dress up as George Washington, the Father of our Country. A goodly number of Americans are so bewitched by the Civil War that they recently refought, with no noticeable change in the result, the Battle of Bull Run. Now the latest craze is World War I planes. Antique aircraft enthusiasts, joined by a smattering of sports car drivers, classic car buff’s and gun collectors, most of whom are psychologically driven to the exotic, have, in the last three years, seized upon World War I as an outlet for their romantic fantasies.

“The World War I interest is just doubling itself by the month,” says Robert McGrath, proprietor of the World War I Aero Bookshop in Roslindale, Mass. “With the advent of jets and missiles, aircraft lost their romance. A jet or a missile is just the carrier of a pilot. World War I pilots flew the plane. They were charioteers, and it was man against man.”

Mel Tormé, the singer, a dedicated World War I fan, says, “People who are fascinated by flying are, if not disgusted, at least disillusioned by this jet age, this push-button age.” Two years ago Tormé and a number of other enthusiasts helped Hugh Wynne, an architect in Santa Ana, Calif., found The Society of World War I Aero Historians. The society now has upwards of 500 members in the U.S. and abroad and publishes a scholarly quarterly, Cross & co*ckade Journal, given over to detailed articles on such subjects as the Austrian Berg single-seater and the Escadrille Lafayette. (”A lot of junk has been written about the Escadrille,” Wynne says, “and all kinds of people have claimed they were in it.”) In recognition of growing interest in World War I, the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton held a reunion for World War I flyers last June. The guests, led by Captain Eddie Rickcnbacker, America’s leading ace, looked on as pilots performed in vintage World War I planes. No one indulged in dogfighting, but the day that that returns may not be far off.

The World War I craze shows signs of catching on with a wider public. Li’l Abner, the comic strip, recently featured a dogfight between Captain Eddie Ricketyback and “Kaiser Bill’s Greatest Ace,” Baron Ludvig von Henhausen. A couple of Hollywood producers are racing to get their World War I series on TV first. (Actually, there may well be more than enough room for two. The World War I genre has, the Lord help us, all the exploitive potential of the Western.) Riverside Records, specialists in sports car engine sounds, have pressed World War I Fighter Planes in Action, the big selling point of which is the sound of two German Pfalz D-Xlls being pursued by two British Sopwith Camels. To add to the realism the sound track even includes machine-gun fire directed at the Bodies by a French infantryman, who opens up, according to the jacket notes, “a little soon to be effective.”

The book publishing business, too, is beginning to take note of World War I interest. The leader in the field is Harleyford Publications Limited of England. The firm has brought out several lavishly illustrated and expensive ($8.50 each) books, e.g., Air Aces of the 1914-1918 War and von Richthofen and The Flying Circus, which The Society of World War I Aero Historians has pronounced to be “a noble effort.” The main outlet for Harleyford in the U.S. is Gordon’s Bookshop on 59th Street in New York City, hitherto the unofficial headquarters for automobile cultists of all kinds.

The Flying Spy

Long-forgotten histories of World War I aeronautics are suddenly being sought after as classics, and prices have tripled in the past few years. A fine copy of Norman Hall’s Balloon Buster Frank Luke of Arizona brings $30. Hall and Nordhoff’s two-volume study, The Lafayette Flying Corps, sells for up to $ 150, and the war letters and memorial volumes, dedicated to such flyers as Edmond Genet, Norman Prince, Victor Chapman and Hamilton Coolidge fetch as much as $75 apiece. The latest writer to come on strong is Elliott White Springs. His books, written in the ’20s, are common, but since his death two years ago interest in his work has revived. (An eccentric mill owner, Springs is perhaps best remembered as the author of the saucy Springmaid advertisem*nts. An ace in World War I, he wrote a handful of flying stories and novels, notably War Birds, that were so astonishingly successful that they earned him $250,000.)

Even pulp magazines of the ’20s are in demand, particularly copies of the monthly, G-8 and His Battle Aces. G-8, it may be recalled, was not only the Master American Flying Spy but a master of the makeup kit. Whenever G-8 got in a tight spot, which was about every other page, he removed his makeup kit “from its secret hiding place,” disguised himself and quickly outfoxed the hated Huns who were searching the woods for that “verdammter Kerl!” Little did they know that the old farmer bicycling down the road was the Master Spy making his getaway. Assisting G-8 were his Battle Aces, big Bull Martin, “former All-American halfback,” and Nippy Weston, “the little terrier ace who defied superstition by flying Spad No.13 and who delighted in laughing in the very face of death.”

Of course, the most desirable possession any World War I hobbyist can have is a plane. According to a recent count taken by Professor Dean H. Obrecht and Leonard E. Opdycke of Rochester, N. Y., there are 70 authentically restored World War I planes in the U.S. today, 35 of them in flying condition. In addition, there are 44 replicas, which do not rank as high in the scheme of values as do restorations. If the plane is almost exactly as it was the day it left the factory or the day it arrived at the front, it is incomparably desirable. Restoration or replica, it is important to have an original engine. “The airplane can always be built,” explains Cole Palen, a prominent collector, “but building the engine is something else again.”

It is perfectly all right for a licensed pilot to fly a World War I plane today as long, of course, as the plane can pass Federal Aviation Agency inspection. (One collector was irked when an FAA inspector grounded his Spad because of rents in the original linen wing skin. “I thought it was all right,” the collector said, “but he was new, and I guess he was afraid.”)

Aloft, World War I planes are prohibited from flying over cities and villages or any open area of assembly. Though this would tend to indicate some doubt about the durability of the planes, pilots say that with the necessary maintenance the planes hold up reasonably well. In fact, many of the planes can outclimb and outdive light planes of comparable size today. A Spad, for instance, can climb 1,000 to 1,200 feet a minute, a respectable figure for almost any single-engine private plane. However, there are some problems, mainly in landing. The landing gear was built for grass, and a pilot who alights on concrete may as well write off the plane. A Spad is especially difficult to land because of its built-in urge to ground-loop. The Spad has too much weight in the tail, 333 pounds to be exact, and when it touches down in the classic three-point position, it shows a compulsive urge to go down the field backward instead of forward.

There are three major collections of World War I planes in the U.S. The largest, 45 planes in all, belongs to Paul Mantz, three-time Bendix trophy winner and stuntman (he was the first in Hollywood to fly through an open hangar), who keeps the fleet on hand for the movies. (Counting all types of aircraft, Mantz once owned 600 planes, ranking just ahead of Nationalist China as an air power.) Alas, some purists look down upon Mantz’s collection. “He cuts up his planes a lot,” says Hugh Wynne, “and doesn’t worry much about preserving the original design. For example, he has a Nieuport with a couple of feet clipped off the end of each wing. I don’t know the engineering principle behind the alteration, but I guess it was done to get added speed for racing. Then, too, he has a Fokker D-VII that looks all right outside but doesn’t have the original engine. We aren’t lotus eaters on this subject, you understand, but we just feel that Mantz’s collection is not outstanding from a historical standpoint.”

Wynne has more respect for the collection of Frank Tallman, also a stunt pilot. Tallman, 42, whose father flew for the Navy in France, has been collecting World War I planes for 15 years, and he now has six of them. The prize of the collection is a Pfalz D-XII (the one Riverside used in its recording). Unfortunately, he wrecked it at Wright-Patterson in June after the engine stalled at 400 feet. He ground-looped on landing and smashed the lower right wing and landing gear. Tallman was unhurt. A dashing, mustachioed chap, Tallman revels in wearing riding boots, breeches and a white silk scarf. “When he gets dressed up,” an acquaintance remarks, “he looks like G-8 for sure.”

In the East the outstanding collection belongs to Cole Palen, 35, an aviation mechanic. While learning his trade at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, Palen became enamored of half a dozen World War I planes on exhibit in the field’s museum. When the field had to make way for, of all things, a shopping center, he put in a successful bid for the planes. “It wasn’t much,” he says, “but it was every cent I had at the time.” A few years ago he bought a 100-acre farm outside Rhinebeck, N.Y., cleared a runway through pastures and began building the Old Rhincbeck Aerodrome, a replica of a World War I base in France. To raise money for its construction he has flown his planes at air shows all over the country, and he recently picked up a substantial sum exhibiting his Blêriot XI for a Wings brassiere advertisem*nt.

Though much work remains, the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome is open to the public for a modest admission charge. Palen has landscaped the grounds so that visiting cars are hidden behind an embankment, the only cars out in the open being a 1917 Maxwell truck and a 1910 Sears auto buggy. “I want to preserve the spirit of a World War I aerodrome,” he says. The corrugated hangar is decorated with World War I posters admonishing the viewer to halt the Hun by buying Liberty bonds. Visitors are free to inspect the planes. The most colorful is a Fokker D-VII rendered in a mottled camouflage pattern with a red-and-white polka dot squadron designation on the tail. Palen, decked out in riding trousers, scarf, helmet and goggles, acts as guide. As an added touch, a white handkerchief trails from the top of his helmet. “That’s to wipe the oil off the goggles,” he explains.

A lot of color

The tour over, some visitors are permitted to clamber into the co*ckpit of a Nieuport 28 and try out the controls. The plane is tied down, but there is a great sense of exhilaration as Palen starts the engine. There is even more if the engine happens to catch fire, which it is prone to do. “That adds a lot of color,” says Palen, eyes aglitter. “In fact, it’s got to the point where we might get it on fire on purpose.”

Tags: 1961, G-8 and his Battle Aces, October 1961, Sports Illustrated |Comments (0)

Link - Posted by Davidon October 13, 2014 @ 12:00 pmin

• History

A few years ago, writer and frequent Age of Aces contributer Don Hutchison came up to our table at PulpFest and handed us a manilla envelope, entrusting us with its contents.

When we opened the envelope, there were correspondence between Robert Hogan and Henry Steeger and a copy of the Newton, New Jersey Sunday Herald from October 21st, 1962. The Newspaper contained a lengthy article on former Sussex resident, Robert J. Hogan, nicely illustrated (although there are a few inaccuracies in the captions).

Here is that article:

Lurid Plots Hatched In Sussex Boro

Newton, New Jersey, Sunday Herald • 21 October 1962 (vol.1 no.19)

40 Bank St. Birth Place Of Spy King

Improbable though it may seem, a stately home on a quiet Sussex Borough back street was the hatchery for some of the most diabolical, bloodcurdling international spy plots that rocked the English speaking world less than 30 years ago.

The nefarious schemes that pour from the sparsely-furnished little room upstairs at the rear of the hall overlooking Clove avenue make today’s U-2 flights, satelite “spy-in-the-sky” and CIA cloak and dagger shenanigans sound like Sunday School stories.

For here, in the house at 40 Bank street, now owned and occupied by Dr. and Mrs. Lester Eddy, was born the dauntless G-8, the “Master Spy” and his “Battle Aces”, a fearless group of fliers who thwarted the cruel and ingenious enemies of the United States at every turn—in pulp magazines from coast to coast and around the world.

G-8, the “Spy King of the Pulps”, was the brainchild of Robert J. Hogan, one of the world’s most prolific writers, who now lives at 8 Tamarack Road, Sparta. Back in the depression days of the 1930’s, Hogan thought nothing of pounding out 200,000 words a month for the pulp magazines.

Two Stenographers

His agile, racing mind kept two stenographer-typists busy on split shifts as he produced a complete novel and two short stories every month for the G-8 series, and sandwiched in a cops and robbers series called The Secret Six and a Chinese menace series known as Wu Fang. Each of these called for a 60,000-word novel a month plus enough short stories to fill the back of each magazine.

And G-8 would not have been born in Sussex Borough had it not been for a couple of ice cream cones.

Hogan, who now divides his time between Sparta and Coral Gables, Fla., recalls his introduction to Sussex County in 1931. He and his wife. Betty, were house hunting. They had been living in Melbourne, Fla., when he started his writing career, but decided they wanted to be closer to New York City, editors and the magazine markets.

So, they piled their belongings in their old car and headed north. They had previously seen and liked the old stone houses around Kingston, N.Y. But Kingston was a little far up the river to run into New York and back in a day. (The budding author had to watch his pennies.) Newton seemed to be a good distance, beyond the high rent, daily commuting area.

“It was the hottest day we ever hope to see; the afternoon must have been over a hundred when we pulled into Newton and parked by the square,” Hogan recalls. From Steve Case, who then operated a real estate business on High street next to The New Jersey Herald, they learned the only rental available in Newton was half of a two-family house for $65 a month.

Rent Too High

The Hogans wanted a single house. “Besides, $65 was twice too high for us,” Hogan points out. They asked about Sussex Borough.

“Rents are out of sight in Sussex,” they were told. “High Point Park has boomed the whole area.”

Discouraged, hot and unhappy, the Hogans returned to their car. We were miserable. We looked at our road map and talked about heading for Kingston as a last resort, but with no assurance of finding what we wanted when we got there,” Hogan continues.

“We saw that Sussex was on the way to Kingston. They might have cold ice cream cones in Sussex. We drove on; every mile was torture. We were sweltering, lost children becoming more and more defeated.”

They chugged glumly north through Ross’ Corner. A short distance past the intersection “we stopped at the side of the road and talked over our problem. The whole future seemed hopeless.”

The wayfaring Hogans drove on to Sussex, up Main street, and stopped opposite Van Inwegen’s Drug Store. Hogan went in to get ice cream cones.

“The Vanlnwegen son was behind the soda counter. I ordered the ice cream cones and; just by way of conversation while he dipped, asked if there were any homes for rent in Sussex.”

“Sure,” he said. “You can go over to the Sussex Independent office around the corner and read their ads. But I know the old Simmons mansion up on Bank street is for rent, if it wouldn’t be too big for you.” He suggested they look in the windows.

Window Inspection

Hogan continues: “We drove up Bank street. The house was vacant. We looked in the first floor windows while we finished our ice cream cones.”

“Harry Beemer came over from across Main street where he lived and told us as much as he could about the place. Ben Simmons owned it, but this being August, Ben and his family were at their summer place at Culver Lake.

“Harry said we could drive up Clove avenue, to Bill Little’s house and they’d put us up for the night. In the morning we could see Ben Simmons at his place of business.”

They not only found a comfortable room at the Little home, but also had dinner with the family and were taken for a ride to High Point “That ride to cool High Point just about saved our lives,” Hogan recalls.

The next morning they were waiting for Ben Simmons when he arrived at his store. He said, “How would $35 a month suit you for rent?” The deal was closed then and there, and the Hogans moved into 40 Bank street and remained there for three years.

Hogan continues to reminisce: “They were rough times financially. I wrote furiously, gaining very slowly. One editor said he liked a story of mine about a cowboy turned aviator, who carried his old western six-guns at his side in France. He wanted me to do a series of this character, Smoke Wade, every month, for which he would pay me 1½¢ a word.

This meant we could count on about $200 a month—a near fortune in 1932—for that one novelette (a few days work at the most), besides all the other short stories I might turn out and sell.

Plan Collapses

“Our joy lasted nearly a week. Then came a letter from the editor saying the publishers had decided to discontinue the magazine. Not only was I out of doing the sure-fire series for him, but he, the editor, was suddenly out of work himself. So went the magazine business.^[3]

“During those uncertain times, when stories were more likely not to sell than to sell, probably no tenant ever had a more sympathetic, understanding landlord than Ben Simmons.”

Hogan, who learned to fly during World War I and had worked as a cow puncher earlier in his career, used his personal experiences as backgrounds for his stories. At this period he was writing a lot of World War I air stories for Popular Publications and they had been going over fairly well. One day in 1933 the publisher called him in and suggested Hogan try his hand at writing a full book-length novel and a short story or two to fill a magazine.

“Driving home to 40 Bank street from Manhattan, everything began to click into place. Popular had a magazine called Battle Aces that was doing fairly well, but they would like to switch that title to a new magazine if possible.

G-8 Is Born

“Various branches of the Army, I knew, were designated as Gl, G-2, and so forth. Why not G-8, the Master American Flying Spy? Pilots I had known in my flying days came to mind, and from these developed the characters that were to appear in my stories. Then, what about the first novel?

“How about a gigantic German plane in the shape of a bat spewing the most poisonous gas over the unsuspecting countryside? As I drove up Main street in Sussex, along Clove avenue and into the yard, I thought of the title for the first G-8 story: The Bat Staffel (staffel being German for squadron).”

And so, the G-8 series was conceived and born, a series in which G-8 fought monsters with tentacles, men with beast brains, flying zombies, marching skeletons, mad scientists, mysterious gas, flying bombs, monster tanks with spiked treads and flame throwers, armored dirigibles and magnetic rays.

The fertile Hogan brain pulled out all stops and went to work in high gear. “I began to bang out The Bat Staffel in the little room upstairs at the rear of the hall overlooking Clove avenue. My desk was an old kitchen table found in the cellar. Ben Simmons gave us permision to glue it together and put a pressedwood top on it.”

The first of about 100 novels for G-8 and His Battle Aces was written and in the mail to the publishers in eight days. The publishers liked it and asked when he could start on the second G-8 novel.

Assistance Needed

Then Hogan realized he would need some assistance because he had committments for better than 100,000 words each month in other smaller series that were running at the same time. A secretary to take dictation was necessary.

Doris Wilson (now Mrs. Robert Hardin) had just been graduated from business school and was looking for work. She was hired to take dictation. When work piled up and more help was needed, Doris recommended a friend, Willeta Johnson, now Mrs. Harold Knoblauch

Recalling these hectic days, Hogan reports:

“One secretary would come over in the morning. I’d dictate two chapters, to her. and the other would arrive after lunch, and I’d dictate two chapters to her. It was up to them to get together and come up with a complete book. They told me later that often the one who had finished transcribing at home would wait for the other to return from dictation to learn what happened in her two chapters.”

Hogan’s publisher pushed him for copy. He was told not to bother edititing or rewriting — “Don’t even read it; just turn it out and mail it.” And he did.

“I have yet to read a G-8 story,” he says. “Wonder if they were any good?”

All Over the World

Good or bad, the G-8 stories were widely read all over the world, and although the writing was aimed at teenage boys, the writer had fans of all ages during the decade the series flourished. It was estimated by the circulation department that G-8 and His Battle Aces had more readers at its peak than all the boys book series out together.

As the words flowed out and the money flowed in, the Hogans began to think of building their own home, and they ultimately settled on Lake Mohawk. They spent nearly a year in Florida while the new home was under construction, and when they returned, Hogan continued his prolific writing, then with the secretarial assistance of Dorothy Brooks, later to become Mrs. Harold Puffer.

The advent of World War II and rising magazine production costs brought the G-8 series to an end. Hogan then turned to slick magazines, westerns, juveniles and television. One of his westerns became a movie, The Stand at Apache River. His juvenile novel, Howl at the Moon, is considered a classic boy-dog story. Many of his books have been translated into foreign languages.

But somehow, good old violent, bloodcurdling G-8 doesn’t seem to want to stay dead. There now appears to be a rapidly growing demand for reprints of G-8 and His Battle Aces in paper backs, and, as might be expected from the subject matter, television programers are showing interest in the old stories.

Born in Buskirk, N.Y., son of a Dutch Reformed minister, Hogan was educated at Blair Academy, St. Lawrence University and Harvard University. After college he drifted west and rode the range for a while before enlisting in the air branch of the U.S. Signal Corps (the forerunner of the U.S. Air Force) in January, 1918. He was discharged in November, 1918, and after that went into the business of flying and selling planes.

With a rented typewriter ($3.50 a month) he started his writing career in Florida in 1930 after reading a few stories in a pulp magazine and deciding he could do just as well. He did.

• Download “Lurid Plots Hatched In Sussex Boro, p.6″ (21 October 1962, Newton, NJ Sunday Herald)
• Download “Lurid Plots Hatched In Sussex Boro, p.7″ (21 October 1962, Newton, NJ Sunday Herald)

Tags: G-8 and his Battle Aces, Robert J. Hogan, Smoke Wade |Comments (0)