The Dive Bomber

January 7, 2013
First published in the pulp magazine Five-Novels Monthly in 1937, this intriguing tale of aerial derring-do offers up a big patriotic chest thump for American aviators on the eve of WWII. Lucky Martin, the “Number One test pilot in the United States,” is trying to sell the military a fleet of customized dive bombers, but his test planes keep crashing suspiciously. When smarmy businessman Joe Bullard offers to pay Lucky to convert his fleet to “sporting planes,” Lucky recognizes a dodge to circumvent the U.S. government’s neutrality laws and sell the planes abroad, where they could be used as weapons against American ships. Facing blackmail by Bullard—who has also kidnapped Lucky’s gal Dixie—Lucky has to find some way to prove the mettle of his innovative planes, in order to keep them in America. Hubbard (Mouthpiece) grounds his cliffhanger adventure firmly in aeronautical details that make its thrilling events seem plausible.

March 15, 2013
Hubbard again demonstrates why he was one of the most accomplished purveyors of pulp fiction with this taut, exciting story, first published in 1937. Test pilot and inventor Lucky Martin (in pulp fiction, if the guy's called Lucky, you know he isn't) has come up with a radical new design for a dive bomber, a design that could win the war for the Americansif Lucky can manage to figure out who's been sabotaging him, not to mention who's trying to kill him. Written in Hubbard's usual breathless style, the story is like an old-fashioned movie serial, as Lucky gets into one scrape after another, barely escaping with his skin intact. Fans of Golden Age pulp fiction will want to add this one to their reading lists.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)