Captain Midnight to the Rescue!

Aviation and radio came of age together, lifting the spirits of Americans when they needed it most.

When V.L. Cannon Jr. received a new Piper J-3 Cub on a Sunday afternoon in November 1941, more than 15,000 of his friends showed up. Their cars were parked for almost a mile along the roads beside English Field, the airport in Amarillo, Texas. An “armada” of 15 other airplanes, as the local newspaper described it, flew over the city while the Sons of the West singing group serenaded the crowd. Mayor Joe Jenkins personally presented the airplane, while the festivities were broadcast live on a local radio station.

Cannon wasn’t a celebrity—at least not until the previous Friday night. He was a 33-year-old machine shop office manager who had finally won the Piper after submitting some 300 short essays to a contest held by “Wings of Destiny,” a national aviation-themed radio program that gave away a new Cub every week. 

Many other aviation-themed programs attracted huge audiences with more modest goodies—membership cards, wings, decoder badges—that were coveted by youngsters (and, likely, by more than a few adults). The radio shows, sometimes broadcast five days a week, offered folks sitting in their living rooms a way to experience the thrills of flying. Tailspin Tommy, Jimmy Allen, Speed Gibson, Captain Midnight, and other heroic pilots zoomed, engines roaring, across the country and around the world to fight evil-doers and rescue those in distress.

“The enthusiasm for flight transcends the challenges and trauma of the Great Depression,” says Jeremy Kinney, associate director for research and curatorial affairs at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Kinney, who studies the cultural side of aviation in the 1920s and ’30s, says there was a movement at the time known as “air-mindedness,” when Americans became enamored with aviation. “It’s expressed in many ways, but radio is central to that,” he says.

“Radio and aviation grew up together,” says Karl Schadow, an independent researcher in Springfield, Virginia, who studies and writes about the early days of radio broadcasting.

Commercial radio reached maturity, beginning what’s known today as its Golden Age, by around 1930, attracting millions of listeners. National networks linked the country, providing a shared experience unlike anything before. “If you’re an average person sitting at home, the truth is, maybe you don’t have a job, maybe you don’t have a lot of food, maybe you don’t have a lot of opportunities,” says Donna Halper, an associate professor of communication and media studies at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “But if you have a radio, you have this great escape. It can take you places you’d never be able to go, let you experience adventures vicariously.”

At the same time, aviation was the technological fascination of its day, and its practitioners­—Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, and many others—became international celebrities. As airplanes grew bigger and faster, air races became a national pastime (an average of 28,000 spectators per day attended the 1930 National Air Races in Los Angeles), and record-setting flights made headlines from coast to coast. Despite ongoing improvements in safety, crashes were still frequent (four pilots died in a 1930 race in Chicago), adding an element of danger that further fueled aviation’s appeal.

War Stories

Aviation first arrived on radio by way of the news. Stations broadcast talks by pilots, aircraft designers, military men, and other experts. “Whenever Lindbergh speaks, it’s on the radio,” says Kinney. And as commercial aviation developed, some radio news directors dispatched reporters to record short interviews with arriving passengers. “It was nothing Earth-shattering,” says Schadow, but the idea of flying was so foreign that many Americans were hungry to hear even the most mundane stories from those who had taken to the air. Aviators were the astronauts of their era.

Aviation made its greatest impression, though, via stories of daring exploits. Some were based—often loosely—on real aviators and their experiences. “George Bruce’s Air Stories of the World War,” for example, related the wartime adventures of Bruce and his fellow pilots in episodes such as “Ace Without a Country” and “Deacon From Hell.” Likewise, Frank Hawks, a war pilot who later pursued aviation records, added to his fame through his own show.

Most of the shows, however, were pure fiction. Their heroes were either teenage boys or stout-jawed paragons of virtue (no, you couldn’t see them, but they had to be stout-jawed) who righted wrongs, protected the innocent, and fought nefarious (and often stereotypical) villains with names like Ivan Shark and Dragon Lady.

And even if the heroes weren’t teenagers, they always had at least one teenage sidekick. “They added kids to shows because they thought kids wouldn’t listen otherwise,” says Jack French, an old-time radio researcher in Fairfax, Virginia, who grew up listening to early radio programs and has written two books about them. “That’s not true, though—we were interested in Sky King, not Penny and Clipper” (the character’s niece and nephew).

“The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen” was the archetype for the genre. It premiered on February 23, 1933, and was syndicated to stations on 16-inch transcription disks. It featured the fictional adventures of 16-year-old Jimmie Allen (played by 40-something actor-director John Frank), who was training to be a pilot. Allen was mentored by Speed Robertson, a fighter ace in the Great War, and aided by mechanic Flash Lewis. The trio solved crimes (as pilots normally do), competed in air races, thwarted hijackings, and pursued other adventures.

“Jimmie Allen” established other templates: The show was 15 minutes long, aired five days a week (usually between 4 and 7 p.m., the hours set aside for children’s programming), and featured stories that ran for weeks. Most episodes had only a few actors (after recaps, sponsor messages, and a teaser for the next episode, there was less than 10 minutes of actual program), supplemented by sound effects. These included icy winds, roaring automobiles, the “blam-blam” of guns (lots of guns), and, of course, airplanes—starting their mighty engines, taking off, screaming across the dial, diving, banking, and landing. When things went wrong, the engines coughed and sputtered, and then the airplane crashed (usually at the end of the episode) leaving our heroes in peril.

“Jimmie Allen” was so popular the show quickly expanded far beyond the airwaves. Its initial sponsor, Skelly Oil, received so much fan mail it created the Jimmie Allen Flying Club. Young listeners signed up by dragging their parents to the local Skelly station—mom or dad just might need some gas or oil—where they received a pair of wings, a membership badge, and a welcome letter from Jimmie himself. They even took a pledge: “To do all in my power to make America first in the air. To promote American commercial, transport and military aviation.” New premiums were released every couple of months: blueprints, photographs, medallions, and more.

“To kids, aviation was like candy,” says Larry Zdeb of Troy, Michigan, who has been collecting radio premiums for four decades and operates two Facebook pages dedicated to the pastime. “During the Depression, kids loved getting stuff for free.”

Club members also received a newspaper: At the show’s peak, Skelly was mailing 600,000 copies per week. Another sponsor, Richfield Oil Company, acquired a Stearman 4E that was flown by its chief pilot, Dudley Steele, as a promotional vehicle for the company’s support of the Jimmie Allen Flying Club and the Jimmie Allen Air Races, which were held throughout the country. Boys and girls built model airplanes to certain specifications, then raced them at big air exhibitions or at separate events. 

Man of Mystery

“Jimmie Allen” and most other series were aimed at boys, so they featured male leads. “There were women pilots, but from listening to radio you wouldn’t know it, except for Amelia Earhart and maybe Ruth Nichols,” says Halper, who worked as a DJ and radio consultant before she joined the faculty at Lesley University. “It was decided, in many cases by the sponsors, that the stars would be all-American boys. They were resourceful, courageous, exciting, and they were the ones having adventures.”

One of the few exceptions was the 1930s-era “Ann of the Airlanes,” which featured a young nurse, Ann Burton, who longed to be an air hostess (flight attendant)—the only female lead on any radio program at the time. “An air hostess had to be charming, know some nursing, be dignified, unmarried, and attractive— this is what a woman or girl could be,” says Halper, who wrote the book Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting.

Ann flew with pilot Steve Baker across the country and as far as Africa. The show was heavy on educating. In one episode, an undercover Secret Service agent spends several minutes explaining to the bad guys how the difference in altitude and airspeed affects fuel consumption—a key point for an intercontinental flight.

“Ann of the Airlanes” was produced and distributed by Russell Comer, an advertising executive in Kansas City, Missouri, who also distributed “Jimmie Allen” and its successor, “Captain Midnight.” Like “Jimmie Allen,” the captain was the creation of two of the most prolific writers of the genre, Robert Burtt and Wilfred Moore. They had flown in World War I, and their backgrounds were as aviation-rich as their scripts. “Burtt and Moore have a special place,” says French. “They became very good radio writers. Many of these shows were written by people who’d never been in a cockpit and knew nothing about flying.”

Moore, who dropped out of his freshman year in college to fly with Britain’s Royal Flying Corps, later went on a barnstorming tour, then managed an aviation company in Kansas City, Missouri. In the fall of 1929, he set a speed record for light aircraft—123.17 mph for 60 miles—missing an altitude record by about 200 feet. When his company faltered in 1931, he hosted a sports program on radio station WDAF.

Published accounts say Burtt served with the Lafayette Escadrille, the famed group of American aviators flying with French air forces before the United States entered the war, and its American successor, the Third Pursuit Group. During one mission, Burtt was ambushed by eight Fokkers and shot down. “The young pilot dove 10,000 feet and—prop shot off and hot oil spurting into the cockpit—crashed into a deep shell hole in No Man’s Land,” according to a 1938 story in his local newspaper in Crystal Lake, Illinois. “That night, under hissing star shells, and raked by continuous bursts of gun fire, Burtt crawled safely to the American lines.” 

Burtt was working for WDAF when he met Moore. They agreed that existing aviation programs were unrealistic, so they set out to create a new one. “Jimmie Allen” was their first effort. Moore later created “The Blue Angels,” another story about air hostesses, and “Howie Wing, A Saga of Aviation!” which was in production when he died in 1939, just days after completing a 6,000-mile air tour of Canada. Burtt’s other projects included “Sky King,” which stretched into the 1950s before jumping to television, and he wrote scripts for “Hop Harrigan.”

“Captain Midnight” was the two men’s greatest creation, running from 1939 to 1949, sponsored first by Skelly and later by Ovaltine, a chocolate drink mix. It featured the exploits of war ace Captain Red Albright. He came in from a mission one night at midnight, so his commanding officer decided to call him Captain Midnight. As the series progressed, though, Albright’s original identity was ignored and he became a “man of mystery,” according to the Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio.

“I don’t think there ever was a better show than ‘Captain Midnight,’ ” says Zdeb, who has authored a book, Captain Midnight: The Definitive Guide, which contains details on most of the show’s episodes. Over the years, the captain—along with chief mechanic Ichabod “Ikky” Mudd, and teenagers Chuck Ramsay and Patsy Donovan—chased the nefarious Ivan Shark, a “master criminal who wanted to control the world,” aided by his daughter Fury, Zdeb says.

The captain’s official fan clubs—Flight Patrol and its successor, the Secret Squadron—would eventually sign up more than a million members. The clubs offered enough premiums to fill a warehouse, many of which are prized collectibles: a bronze medal, a weather-forecasting flight patrol badge, rings, an insignia patch, and more. “The most important premium was the Code-O-Graph,” says Zdeb. “They issued a new version every year except 1943 and 1944, when there was a metal shortage. It was an important connection between the listener and Captain Midnight. The highlight of the show was a secret message for the listeners to decode using the Code-O-Graph.”

The show took on a darker tone when World War II broke out. The Secret Squadron fought Nazis and villains such as the Barracuda and Admiral Himakito. Around the beginning of 1949, the captain’s appeal began to fade. The show switched from five days a week to two 30-minute episodes, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Cliffhanger endings fell off a cliff and Captain Midnight “became more of a detective than an aviator, encountering ridiculous situations and solving petty crimes,” Zdeb says. Ovaltine cancelled the show, deciding to use their advertising budget on television programs, including “Howdy Doody.”

Going Hollywood

World War II brought many changes to radio and its programs. Audiences could experience the perils of aviation as they listened to German bombers attacking London through the broadcasts of renowned CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow. Aviation dramas, for both juvenile and adult audiences, pitted their heroes against the Germans or Japanese. “Most programs just switched over,” says French. “Instead of fighting bad guys and ghosts and criminals, now they were fighting the Axis powers.”

Programmers supported the war effort by creating new series to extol the virtues of American aviation and aviators. “Wings of Victory,” for example, told the death-defying tales of real combat pilots. Orson Welles produced and starred in “Ceiling Unlimited,” a series sponsored by aircraft manufacturer Lockheed-Vega. The unabashedly patriotic show told stories of the B-17 Flying Fortress, Air Transport Command, anti-submarine patrols, and workers at the Lockheed-Vega factory (“America’s secret weapon” in the war, Welles proclaimed). The show featured such Hollywood actors as Edward G. Robinson, Burgess Meredith, and Joseph Cotten, along with one script by novelist John Steinbeck and music by Bernard Herrmann, who would later score the films Psycho and The Day the Earth Stood Still.

“ ‘Ceiling Unlimited’ really brought Hollywood into the genre—it’s a great snapshot of the role of Hollywood in aviation,” says Kinney. “And it really touches on all the bases of what aviation was like at that moment, the culture of making airplanes a part of everyday life.”

“Wings of Destiny,” which debuted in July 1940, is another example of how the war led to a shift in tone. At first, it featured the fictional exploits of pilot Steve Benton, “soldier of fortune, a mysterious, easy-going daredevil of the clouds,” according to the Tampa Times. But in 1941, the show changed format, opting instead to recreate the stories of real men and women in military and civil aviation. Subjects included Edwin Aldrin Sr., a U.S. Army aviator and father of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin; a U.S. Coast Guard flying boat rescue mission conducted during dangerous weather; and a sergeant stationed in Alaska who was decorated for heroism during an influenza outbreak.

“Wings of Destiny” was sponsored by Brown & Williamson Tobacco and its Wings cigarette brand, and it aired at 10 p.m. every Friday—well outside regular children’s programming hours. Yet it offered membership cards, collectible aircraft cards (three sets of 20), and other premiums. “I love this quote [from Variety],” says Halper: “ ‘It’s aimed at an air-minded generation that’s young enough to seek excitement but old enough to smoke.’ ”

The real appeal of the show, however, was the most impressive give-away ever offered by any radio program: a Piper Cub powered by a 65-horsepower Continental engine. “Just think about it a minute,” wrote a columnist in the Muncie Evening Press. “The airplane that was so strange to everyone just a few years ago, and now a national radio program is giving one away every week for a year as prizes in a contest!”

Contestants submitted 25-word sentences about a specific topic. Program staff whittled down the entries—an average of about 22,000 per week during the first year—and a panel of judges made the final selection as the program aired. (One week the voting was tied, so the show awarded two Cubs.)

“The show’s entire emphasis was on the free Piper Cub,” says French. The company flew the winner’s Cub, emblazoned with the Wings cigarettes logo, to a nearby airport, and presented it with as much pomp and circumstance as it could muster. The ceremony for O.H. Massengale, a grocery clerk in South Carolina, featured the mayors of two local towns plus telegrams from the governor and a senator.

Some winners kept the airplane, which included flying lessons. Others, who had no interest in flying, sold them. “It was a bit of a white elephant,” says French. “What do you do with a Piper Cub if you can’t fly?”

Pearl Harbor put an end to the free airplanes. When Piper turned its full production capacity to making aircraft for the military, there were no extra Cubs to give away. The last one was presented to George B. Zebley of Newark, Delaware, on December 28, 1941. (The exact number given away is unclear; many sources say 63, others say 65.) 

Aviation-themed radio programs marched through the war years but began to lose their appeal when a new medium—television—hit the airwaves. Only a few lasted into the 1950s, and many of those were already making the transition to television.

Beginning in the 1970s, though, many of the radio shows reappeared. They aired on local stations and were sold on cassettes. Today, thousands of old-time radio shows are available for free on the web, attracting new generations of fans. “Once you start listening, you’re hooked,” says Zdeb.

“These were really good stories—when you listen to them, whether as a kid or an adult, you can get caught up in them,” says Halper. “Some of these shows stand on their own—they stand the test of time.”  

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Damond Benningfield is a radio producer and science writer in Austin, Texas.