Who's This? A Navajo pilot.
The facts: Johnny Cloud is a WWII aerial ace created by - you probably guessed it - Robert Kanigher for All-American Men of War #82
(December 1960), starring in that book through #115, until brought into the Losers (as of Our Fighting Forces #45) with other war characters who had lost their strips, a team that would also appear in other DC war books through to the 1980s, and dying in the Losers Special during the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
How you could have heard of him: While Johnny Cloud is referenced from time to time (for example, in the New History of the DCU), his most widely-prominent appearance is in the animated Losers DC Showcase. He's in New Frontier (book and animated film) as well.
Example story: All-American Men of War #103 (May-June 1964) "Battle Ship -- Battle Heart!" by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert
As mentioned in the entry, Johnny Cloud had faced racism in the service, but still earned his place at the head of his own squadron, the "Happy Braves". He's shown to be a great strategist and leader, and no one questions his orders. Seems pretty progressive for 1964. And here, they're fighting the London Blitz, and Joe Kubert gets to draw some WWII aerial action - I'm not too fussy, honestly.
His plan is to fly straight at the German planes, taking fire while doling it out, while most of his unit suprise-attacks from above. It's stuff like this - and his knack for surviving it - that has made him a legend in his own time.
The ploy works and the surviving Germans take their wheels out in surrender, then are escorted to a British airfield. No one in Johnny's Squadron has ever dropped their wheels in surrender, and never would. Especially Johnny whose attitude is informed by his Navajo heritage, and an incident involving his father and a challenger who would forever live in shame.
But that night, Johnny dreams of surrendering to the enemy... Is this the kind of strip where dreams are prophetic? The next day, Johnny is on a sortie with one of his men nicknamed Happy when they get ambushed on the Channel. Is it Happy's end?
The important thing is that Happy kept his wheels up. But can Johnny keep them up as his plane is cribbled with bullets and he runs out of ammo? He seems to say yes, but his plane has other ideas. The wheels DROP DOWN by themselves (from damage, perhaps), and the Nazis are quite content to take this as a surrender. Johnny: "Continue fight! I haven't surrendered!"
But his radio is also damaged and can't send, only receive, so... no take-backs, Johnny! Because they think it's a surrender, he can't break that "truce" and must become their prisoner. The shame is overwhelming. He begs the Germans to accept his explanation, but they would rather dishonor him. After all, who WOULDN'T believe someone in his position would surrender? Their engineer does confirm that the wheels dropped by accident, however. So what are honorable aerial aces to do? They get back into the sky and decisively shoot down this Navajo maverick, that's what. He's flying a piece of junk anyway, should be easy. Johnny flies real low to avoid most of the enemy fire, dodging French farm houses to get back to the Channel. By then, only the one Nazi ace is dogging his trail, so Johnny pulls his craziest trick yet. He flies up on a collision course with the enemy plane, and...
We get rather abruptly to the cover image and then it's all over (should have devoted the entire issue to this story, honestly). Not even sure if the German ace survived, or was picked up by the American helicopter and made a prisoner, hoisted on his own petard.
But this whole story kind of surprises me. The only place I'd ever encountered Johnny was in the Losers, and there, he's played as a younger, happier-seeming type. In his own stories, he seems older, harder, and frankly, more heroic.
Who's Next? A formulaic speedster.
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