Narcotics were popularly seen as so far outside the norm that they were not suitable as a topic for pulp action films under Hays motion picture production code. Instead, alien smuggling became the go-to topic for depicting air-minded villains. Acosta's account reinforced a favored unsubstantiated trope of the aeronautical underworld as depicted by Hollywood - the trap door for jettisoning passengers upon aerial interception.30 No newspaper or official accounts are in evidence that support Acosta's claims for the existence of such modifications, though some bootlegging airplanes were rumored to have this capability. Nonetheless, Hollywood embraced it as a plot device. Aerial alien smuggling became a popular theme through the mid to late 1930s in radio and motion picture serials. The transgressing airplane was no longer a tool of aerial Robin Hoods who dispensed booze to thirsty patrons with a wink and a nudge. Americans who routinely read of the airborne horrors inflicted on populations in China, Spain, and Ethiopia, were increasingly eager to celebrate the airborne law enforcer, whether Coast Guardsman or Border Patrolman as the newest form of aeronautical hero who defeated the villain who would misuse the beneficent airplane in acts of evil.

Conclusion The widespread lawlessness of American aviators in the Prohibition era appears in tension with the expansive political and cultural campaigns to legitimize and normalize aviation in American society for the establishment of an "air-minded" nation. The criminality of prominent aviators like Erle Halliburton and Ed Musick points to an apparent contradiction between normative and deviant behavior that can only be explained by the existence of broader discourse that posited aerial smuggling as a disruptive techno-cultural practice that was complementary to the broader rhetoric of the airplane as a socially transformative innovation.