Above: The artwork as it appeared on the cover of Fawcett’s Battle Stories, August 1929

A rare surviving aviation themed pulp cover painting by Stockton Mulford for the cover of Fawcett’s Battle Stories, August 1929. In this dramatic image, a recently downed airplane smolders as the ejected American Air Force pilot, armed only with a wrench, engages in combat against a German, bayonet-wielding, WWI soldier.

Aviation pulps appeared on news-stands in the 1920s as the horror of World War I began to fade from public memory leaving room for the development of heroic and mythic tales of soldiers and aviators. Until the start of the Second World War, the aviation pulps focused on these Great War-themed stories, but after 1941, their content switched to tales of glory from the front lines of WWII. Painting is signed lower left and framed in a simple wood frame with original wood stretchers and unrelined old canvas.