Kenny's Old Time Model Airplane Magazine:
February 2002

Editorial

Welcome back gang.

This month's cover was chosen for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious is its beauty. Jo Kotula was the full time cover artist for Model Airplane News for decades, and worth every penny he was paid. I imagine he was indeed worth a good deal more. While the Flying Aces covers were cool in a child like way, with plenty of action and streaming bullets, and Air Trails had some great Frank Tinsley covers, neither had the consistent, clean, fetching covers of Kotula's Model Airplane News.

My second reason was for its subject matter. In this month's story, a 1936 "Smashing Buzz Benson Yarn," our hero battles along in a two-place Lockheed XP-9. He seems to hold his in this craft, but oh what a difference a few years makes. Had he been behind the stick of Kotula's Lockheed XP-38 the story would have only lasted a dozen paragraphs. (By the way, don't you just love those X's in front of the designation number? Somehow both dangerous and exciting. How boring it would have been had they used E, the logical choice for experimental?) The speed of advancement of this age never ceases to amaze me. A fascinating time to wander back through.

Be well, and enjoy Vol. 2 No. 1.

The Story

This month's we return to the first author presented here, Arch Whitehouse. Whitehouse, whose graphic biography is presented below, had a stable of leading characters such as Crash Carringer, Tug Hardwick, Kerry Keen, Coffin Kirk, and this month, Buzz Benson. Why he had so many characters, I'm not entirely sure; they all are pretty much interchangeable. I suspect that Whitehouse needed all those slightly different characters to allow new twists to his story telling. Lord knows he needed all the help he could get at the Flying Aces magazine, what with his one story a month, his "Happy Landings" column, and the "All Questions Answered" feature, plus assorted articles which ended with A.W. or the like.

His stories were all contemporary mystery adventure types, with the hero of the day shooting down bad guys and bringing things back to the way they should be. This month Buzz Benson is out to solve the mystery of the missing pilot/inventor whose new carburetor allows planes to fly non-stop across the Pacific. Before long, he also finds himself in the middle of a Japanese invasion of the North West Coast of the United States. Can Buzz save the pilot and stave off the invaders? All will be answered in Death Spans the Pacific, straight from the brittle-yellowed pages of the August 1936 issue of Flying Aces magazine.

Enjoy,

Death Spans the Pacific - to print & read with glorious illustrations

Death Spans the Pacific - to read off web (sorry no illustrations)

They Had What it Takes

This month I'm having the "How To" article take a short hiatus, and instead I'll have a quick graphic biography. Again, from the pages of Flying Aces magazine, the They Had What it Takes, illustrated by Alden McWilliams, feature highlighted flying heroes of the past. In this issue they showcase Royal Flying Corps. ace, and popular author, Arch Whitehouse.

Arch Whitehouse - Skyfighter-Writer

The Rubber Powered Model Airplane Plans

As promised last month, here we go with the Phineas foe! Number 9 in Henry Struck's Trail Blazers of the Air series in Flying Aces magazines, the Fokker D-7 could possibly have been the most modeled subject of the Golden Age. Rather than trying to repeat the story of the time or the D-7 as a model, I will refer you to Bill Hannan's two books Stick & Tissue vols. 1 and 2. Nowhere are the emotions of this age, and the Dime-Scale model in particular, better reported than in his Ten-Cent Time-Machines, and there may be no better designed model than his Hell's Angels D-7.

Hannan's Runway is the source for all of his books. Give them a click, you won't be sorry.

This month's sport model, the Phone Booth Special, is again a throwback to my first issue; here is another model from the prolific drawing board of Louis Garami. While looking for the Fokker article, I stumbled across this sweet little indoor stick model. If Bill Hannan were older, I suspect that his Escondido Mosquito could have looked much like this. Try this little parlor pursuit. The fun for effort quotient looks very promising!

Thermals.

Henry Struck's Fokker D-7

Louis Garami's Phone Booth Special

The Solid Model Airplane Plan

This month's solid model, the North American
XP-51"Mustang" is a bit of a stretch. In keeping with this month’s fascination with the "X" series of prototype aircraft, we present a very early (September, 1941 Model Airplane News) rendition of this most famous fighter. Certainly the most recognizable American design of all time, it is hard to believe that there could have ever been a day when this profile was not a fixed part of every young boy's subconscious. Hyped in the article as the "World's Fastest Single-Engine Fighter," did the reader of the day realize what he was looking at, or perhaps just thought "ya, nice lines, but I've been fooled before?"

The drawing is so interesting. At first glance one almost wonders what it is. Clearly it is like a Mustang, but .… On closer examination, you begin to appreciate how close it is. You start to imagine the one or two photos Robert McLarren was working from, the deadline he was working on to publish this scoop. The fact is that very few people had seen this plane; artistic license and educated guesses were needed to meet the deadline. As I mentioned in the opening editorial, the speed and excitement of this age is awe-inspiring. For kids and adults alike, for city slickers hanging out at airports, to country kids in the middle of nowhere, even say Rocky Mountain House Alberta, these magazines were the small price of admission into this fascinating world.

Solid Model of the XP-51 Mustang

The Advertisement

This month's ad presents the line of Hawk Model Airplanes, and is taken from the May 1936 issue of Model Airplane News. Hardly heard of these days, Hawk was a prominent advertiser in the 1930's but hasn't kept the following of the other large companies. I can't say that I know anything of the models or the company. I've never seen one of their plans, or heard of anyone building and flying one, though I'm sure some of you have. The ads looked great though, and I suspect that they would have pried some money out of my pockets.

Hawk Model Airplanes

Many of the documents I will be sharing will be in .pdf format

PDF files are to be read using Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is a free download from Adobe and is a simple tool from which these documents can be viewed and printed. To print, under print options select "print as image." This should result in a printed copy equal in size to the original.

Please e-mail me at khorne@ualberta.ca if you have any comments or suggestions for my website!

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