Thanks to Raiders of the Lost Ark most Pulp RPGs red-line air travel. This is a most welcome abstraction. However, there are exceptions to the rule, either because a scenario takes place on an aeroplane or because encounters happen on the journey. Of course it rather telegraphs the action if a sudden interest in how the characters plan to travel always presages trouble. “Thanks, I’ll keep my life jacket on, Tommy Gun in hand, and perform the old switcheroo of flights at every stop.”
Aircraft and infrastructure developed at an exponential rate in the the 1930s. Raiders was set in 1936 and many pulp games assume a late 1930s level of aircraft technology. This is overpowered for a game set c. 1930.
Commercial air travel is only really available in the United States and Western Europe. Even then it is only for businesses and the rich. Longer routes are the domain of post rather than passenger carriers. The first all-air commercial airline service from Los Angeles to New York was only introduced in the autumn of 1930. This replaced the plane-and-train service which itself had only started in the autumn of 1929.
Adventurers will usually be flying privately-owned aircraft. This is what happened in The Man of Bronze (1933). In the story Doc Savage and his crew are trying to get from New York to the (fictional) Central American republic of Hidalgo (*Honduras*). Parties unknown are trying to stop them.
Savage’s first plan is to take his personal tri-motor cargo plane from North Beach, Long Island, but it is sabotaged by the enemy. The team transfers to Doc’s floatplane instead.
Unlike the tri-motor which had been destroyed, this plane was of the latest design. It was a tri-motor craft also, but the great engines were in eggs built directly into the wings. It was what pilots call a low-wing job, with the wings attached well down on the fuselage, instead of at the top. The landing gear was retractable—folded up into the wings so as not to offer a trace of wind resistance. It was the ultra in an airman’s steed, this super-craft. And two hundred miles an hour was only its cruising speed to zoom down on an airport at the outskirts of Washington.
Yeah, this is a bit ambitious for 1933; if you think you’re going to get these speeds in 1930, forget it.
There’s a bit of nonsense in Washington when Doc transfers to a “regulation war plane” to chase the enemy’s henchmen who have stolen his auto-gyro. That resolved, the team fly off to Miami. “The approximately nine-hundred-mile flight to Miami they made in something more than five hours, thanks to the tremendous cruising speed of Doc’s superplane.”
From Miami they have an uneventful flight to Havana. “To Cuba was not quite another three hundred miles. They were circling over Havana before the night was many hours old. Another landing for fuel, and off again.”
From Havana they flew, “across the Caribbean to Belize, their destination on the Central American mainland, somewhat over five hundred miles. It was an all-water hop.” [0504 on the British Honduras brickmap if that’s in use.]
It’s as they touch down in the waters off Belize that they are ambushed by a sniper. Whilst dealing with that threat their floatplane is strafed by a “blue monoplane”. Bullets damage their floats delaying their departure until spares can be flown in from Miami.
Repairs effected on, “the morning of the fifth day after arriving in Belize, they took to the air for Blanco Grande, capital of Hidalgo. Some hours later they were over the border of Hidalgo.” In real life they’d fly over Puerto Cortes [0609 on the British Honduras brickmap] and then south to reach Blanco Grande. [We’ll just assume it’s the actual capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa.]
There you have it; the journey is eventful but not overloaded with action.
The distance calculations in the pulp are tolerably accurate. In real life the distances would look like this:
Long Island to Washington: 278 miles
Washington to Miami: 925 miles
Miami to Havana: 229 miles
Havana to Belize: 530 miles
Belize to Tegucigalpa: 244 miles
The question is, how long is the journey going to take using 1930 tech? We’re going to need to derate that superplane. At the same time the easiest solution – use d100 1920s classic CoC tech might seem underwhelming.
So we present the Air Pageant of 1930.
Here they are again for Mythras:
Why these aeroplanes of the many available?
Junkers G 38. Large German airliner that broke a series of records in 1930 for carrying heavy loads (11,000 lb, 312 miles in 3 hours, 104 mph).
Ford Trimotor 5AT. Workhorse of long-haul travel in the US. The first commercial pasenger service between Los Angeles and New York (2,475 miles), taking 30 hours, was introduced in 1930. 82.5 mph.
Latécoère 28-3. In 1930 the aircraft made the first non-stop flight over the South Atlantic from Dakar to Natal, Brazil carrying 269 lb of mail 1,900 miles in 19.5 hours. Suitable as Doc Savage’s floatplane in The Man of Bronze. 97 mph.
Breguet 19 Super Bidon. In 1930 made the first non-stop westbound flight across the North Atlantic, covering 3,600 miles in 37.3 hours. 96.5 mph.
Fairey Long-Range Monoplane. Specialised monoplane that flew from Britain to India (4,200 miles) non-stop in 52 hours during 1930. 81 mph
de Havilland DH.60 Moth. Older aeroplane that carried the first Indian to make a solo flight from Britain to India (4,200 miles); the journey took 32 days. 5.5 mph.
Curtiss P-6 Hawk. Sucessful biplane fighter which entered full service in 1929. Suitable as the “regulation warplane” in The Man of Bronze.
Travel Air Type R Mystery Ship. Set the west-east record for a flight across the continental US, taking 12.5 hours. 198 mph.
Vickers Type 171 Jockey. Experimental monoplane fighter. Suitable as the “blue monoplane” in The Man of Bronze.
With those figures for long-distance travel we can have simple table for travel times.
Just before doing so it’s worth mentioning airships. They are, in fact, much better covered in the existing rules than aircraft. A “civilian airship liner”, the Hindenburg, is statted up on p.36 of the Mythras Companion. Black Campbell Entertainment offers Airships of the Pulp Age. We’ll include the journey speed of a large airship in the table for completeness’s sake.
The airship is based on the British craft R100 which was very active in 1930. On speed trials R100 reached 81 mph. In 1930 it flew from the UK to Montreal (3,240 miles) taking 78 hours out, but only 57½ hours on the west-east return. 41 mph and 56 mph.
To find out how long a journey will take merely divide the distance in miles by the relevant cruise speed. Check how many refuelling stops might be necessary and plot a route.
Climbing into our Latécoère 28-3 (a Post Carrier) here’s how our team would fare on The Man of Bronze journey:
Long Island to Washington: 3 hours
Washington to Miami: 9.75 hours (they could just fly non-stop from Miami to Tegucigalpa taking another 9.75 hours)
Miami to Havana: 2.5 hours
Havana to Belize: 5.5 hours
Belize to Tegucigalpa: 2.5 hours
Overall journey time: 23 hours 15 minutes (22 hours 30 minutes)
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