Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Review: Killer Tarmac - T.W. Ford (Sky Birds, September 1934)


I read a Western pulp story by T.W. Ford a while back and enjoyed it, as I nearly always do with his Westerns, but being in the mood for something different, I decided to try one of his air war stories. I’d never read anything but Westerns and the occasional detective yarn by Ford.

In “Killer Tarmac”, originally published in the September 1934 issue of SKY BIRDS, stalwart young replacement pilot Art Crain arrives at an aerodrome in France with two things in mind: fighting the Boche, and getting revenge on the two men he blames for the death of his best friend, who was shot down battling the deadly German ace von Kunnel, also known as the Black Tiger. In addition to wanting vengeance on von Kunnel, Art also blames the squadron commander, Major “Bloody” Doll, who accused Art’s friend of cowardice and shamed him into facing von Kunnel alone.

However, once Art finds out more about what happened to his friend, he discovers that not everything is as it seems. While mixing in some top-notch dogfight action, Ford creates some memorable characters who don’t turn out at all like I expected. He does a masterful job of yanking the reader’s sympathies back and forth with each new plot twist. Art Crain is our protagonist, no mistake about that, but as for everyone else in this novella, we’re not sure who to root for, and as Ford leads up to a very suspenseful climax, I had no idea what was going to happen.

“Killer Tarmac” is a fabulous story, just a tad melodramatic and over-the-top now and then but in a good way, and told in terse, hardboiled prose that races along like a Nieuport in the middle of a dogfight. A PDF of it can be downloaded from the Age of Aces website. If you’ve never read an aviation/air war pulp story before, this would be a great place to start.

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