Reviews & Previews: Soldier of Fortune
The life and mysterious death of an American ace in the Spanish Civil War
- By The Editors
- Air & Space magazine, March 2012
Five Down, No Glory:
Frank G. Tinker, Mercenary Ace in the Spanish Civil War
by Richard K. Smith and R. Cargill Hall.
Naval Institute Press, 2011. 377 pp., $36.95.
Spain’s civil war (1936 to 1939) provided a nasty foretaste of World War II, with fascists battling communists, and foreign dictators supporting their favored ideologies. Meanwhile, volunteers flocked in from other countries, usually to fight for the left-wing Spanish government. (The communists had the more energetic propaganda.)
Among the American volunteers was Frank Tinker, an outstanding pilot and a good squadron leader, though he never really learned the language of the Spaniards and Russians he took into combat. The language barrier hardly mattered; there was no radio in Tinker’s Polikarpov fighter.
Tinker was credited with more than enough aerial victories to be designated an ace. Most of his targets were German and Italian biplanes, but they also included two Messerschmitt Bf 109s, one of the great aerial weapons of World War II. Oddly, Smith and Hall (the latter an Air & Space/Smithsonian contributing editor) make no attempt to verify his combat claims, which almost certainly are exaggerated.
Though Tinker achieved the “five down” of a fighter ace, the customary glory escaped him. Working as a mercenary pilot, though, had made him a modestly wealthy man by the time he headed home. A wider war was brewing in which his talents would have been highly valued. Alas, Tinker died in a hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas, of a gunshot wound that at the time was ruled a suicide, though his biographers make a good case that he was murdered.
Comments (1)
The biography of teniente Frank Tinker is overdue and joins "Airmen Without Portfolio" in examining the unique contributions and quirky personalities of the American pilots who flew for the Spanish Republic in the first year of that country’s civil war. I am a big fan of Daniel Ford’s research and writing and am glad he reviewed this book. However, one point need to be made: under Tinker’s contract with the Spanish government, he earned a bonus of $1000 each only for confirmed kills. The government was careful not to waste its dollars and demanded verification for each and every downed plane. In all probability, Tinker’s 8 confirmed kills were probably an undercount and he should have been paid for some of his 11 “probables”. The post-Franco release of Fascist records certainly confirms that the planes in question were downed. By the way, the same goes for Maj. A. J. “Ajax” Baumler who had 4.5 confirmed kills while flying for the FARE (the Republic’s air force). In 1942, when flying alongside the Flying Tigers (Ford’s particular interest), Baumler’s first kill in China earned him both ace status and the distinction of being the first American to have downed planes of the 3 Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan.)
Posted by William L. Rukeyser on January 26,2012 | 06:20 PM