Robert Sidney Bowen

Born in Boston in 1900, Robert Sidney Bowen Jr. lived several careers before becoming widely known as a writer. He served as a World War I aviator, then worked as a newspaper journalist and magazine editor, experiences that helped give his fiction its brisk, lived-in feel.

He is best remembered for adventure fiction for younger readers, especially wartime series such as the Dave Dawson War Adventure books and the Red Randall books. Those stories, centered on aviation, danger, and quick-moving plot twists, found a large audience during and after World War II.

Bowen died in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1977. Today he is remembered as a notably prolific popular writer whose background in flying and journalism gave his action stories an extra sense of authenticity.