Some Still Live

by Frances Smith McCamic Tinker

Frank G. Tinker Jr was a freelance US pilot who signed up with the Republican forces in Spain because he didn't like Mussolini. He was also attracted by the prospect of adventure and a generous pay cheque. Once over in Spain he took on the bombers and fighter pilots lent to the Fascist rebels by Hitler and Mussolini, who used the Spanish Civil War as a practice ground for the mass bombing of civilian populations. Tinker chalked up the largest number of acknowledged kills with a total of 8 Junkers, Fiats and Messerschmitts. When he returned to the US he was unable to rejoin the Armed Forces and, depressed by Franco's victory, he was found in a hotel room in June 1939 with an empty bottle of whisky and a bullet in his head. This is his account of his experiences in Spain.

218 pages, Hardcover

Published February 15, 2023

Reviews

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can’t even surrender in an airplane; your opponent wouldn’t know whether you were joking or not.

I am fortunate enough to have a colleague who studies the Spanish Civil War professionally. And when he heard that I was interested in learning about the conflict, he generously lent me this book, the memoirs of an American pilot who fought during the war. Considering that this book is out of print and hard to get your hands on, this was luck indeed.

Frank Glasgow Tinker, Jr. was an American boy from Louisiana who came to Spain in 1936 to take part in the war. He had learned to fly in the US Navel Academy, and spent some time in the Navy until he was discharged for drinking and brawling (which, if you think about it, is pretty impressive). His main motivation for joining the war, it seems, was just the opportunity to fly combat missions: “When the fighting broke out in Spain in 1936, I was not quite sure which side was fighting for what. I gathered that each was slaughtering the other for being or doing something that the other side did not like.”

After sneaking in by obtaining a fake passport in Mexico, and pretending to be a Spanish citizen—despite his total innocence of the Spanish language—he spent seven months here flying and fighting. Tinker fought on the “loyalist” side, alongside Spaniards, Americans, and Russians, mainly against Italian and German pilots—which shows how international the “civil” war really was. He flew both older biplanes and more modern monoplanes, both of Russian make, against Italian Fiats and German Heinkels and Messerschmitts. And he was good. He shot down at least eight enemy planes, possibly more, making him one of the most successful pilots in Spanish aviation history.

He flew up to three flights a day—responding to alarms, accompanying bombers, strafing trenches, dive-bombing enemy targets, blowing up bridges and trains, driving off enemy bombing squads, and fighting in dogfight after dogfight. The bulk of his fighting took place in the vicinity of Madrid, but he also fought all over the north of Spain. After seven months of this he packed up his bags and went back to the States. Going back wasn't easy, since he had arrived in Spain with a fake passport and didn't have any identification; but eventually he succeeded in returning to the States, where he began writing and going on radio programs.

Some mystery still surrounds his death. The accepted explanation is that he suffered from PTSD and ended his own life; but some have suggested that the FBI may have been responsible. As his own tombstone says, ¿Quién Sabe?

Simply as a historical document, this book is invaluable. It contains maps of the air bases used by the government side, photographs by the reporter Robert Capa of wartime Spain, and a vivid picture of the Government Air Force, not to mention reams of information about aviation. Tinker obviously knew what he was doing when it came to flying; the book is filled with aviation jargon—altitude, weather, engines, weapons, rates of climbing and diving, difficulties of landing and taking off.

Even more impressively, this book is successful simply as a book. For somebody who was not a man of letters, Trinker is a strong writer. He sticks to the facts, and relates them with such vividness, candor, and energy that I often had trouble putting the book down. He never overwrites, he never bogs the book down with too many details, and he never uses flowery rhetoric. His time in Spain was so interesting that no embellishment is needed; the bare facts are fascinating enough.

Apart from his doings, Tinker himself is memorable. He is a uniquely American type. He brawls, he jokes, he drinks, he pranks, he gambles, he womanizes, and he drinks some more, and he flies and fights, and he betrays no ideals beyond good-natured hedonism, fierce loyalty, and a kind of warrior’s respect for bravery and skill. There is not a single political statement in this book, and not any indication that his understanding of the war’s causes ever progressed beyond the very basics. He was a soldier.

I will leave you with my favorite paragraph from the book:

Whitey had managed to get the elevator down (it was one of those automatic affairs), but after he got inside he couldn’t reach the control buttons to make it go up again. He was also unable to reopen the door to get out. After about two minutes of this a huge fellow with a mustache came along and wanted to go up on the elevator, too, but as he saw Whitey was already inside he waited awhile, expecting him to go either up or down. When Whitey failed to do either, the large stranger opened the door and asked him, in Spanish, what the hell he thought he was doing. Whitey, not understanding him, asked, in English, why in hell he hadn’t opened the door instead of standing there with his mouth full of teeth. Whereupon the stranger, in perfectly good American, answered that people shouldn’t get into strange elevators unless they were sure they could get out of them. Whitey almost fell on his face when he heard himself answered in English, but soon recovered and explained his predicament and had the stranger do his button-pushing for him. I saw the last part of this act and asked the man at the desk who the stranger was. He proved to be no other than Ernest Hemingway, the famous writer.

[Scott Head · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tinker's exploits as a mercenary fighter pilot in 1937 Spain are told in dull form in this memoir of the Spanish Civil War. I was hoping for some better descriptions of the motives and politics of the various people TInker met, flew with and lived with. He had a tendency to talk down to the reader as if he had a highly technical subject to decipher to a 6th grade lay person. He also had a bit of that annoying American arrogance so universally mentioned by non-Americans, but is usually unrecognized by Americans themselves. Examples include attributing the designs of any aircraft he encountered to being ripped off from an American type. Thus, his I-15, a Russian fighter plane, was described as being "a version of our P-12." The I-16 he later flew, a purely Russian design, was described as being a kind of American monoplane development. This, from a fighter pilot, was very disappointing. His naming of the various types of aircraft he encountered was colloquial, making it hard to get the full picture of his exploits. As a memoir, he can write whatever he wants, of course, but it would have carried a little more authority and legitimacy had he demonstrated some greater knowledge of the air war he reported.

The book had its moments of those stories that make a memoir so enjoyable. When one of his squadron mates and good friends disappeared, only to be found out as a Japanese spy, the story pulled at heart-strings. The pictures of life at the various fields, the run-ins with folks like Ernest Hemingway, and the troubles with various bureaucracies lent some interest to the 300 pages of otherwise dull writing. I'm glad I read the book, it is insightful, it provides a look into how Americans generally bull their way into other cultures with a dumb blindness to the fact that they are foreigners. It gives some insights into how the Loyalists ran things during the war, barely. But it did not get into the motives, the worldview, the thinking, of people who saw fit to sell their services to fight in a foreign war.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank Glasgow Tinker, graduate of the Naval Academy and aviator, has the signal distinction of being kicked out of the Navy for drinking and fighting. [As a former naval aviator myself, I'm somewhat in awe of that.] Then he went to Spain, by day flying Russian made fighters against Italian and German made fighters, by night boozing it up with Hemingway and that lot. Then he wrote a book about it. Then he came back to Arkansas and killed himself.