COLLECTOR’S NOTES:

The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen was first heard on radio on February 23, 1933. It was produced in Chicago and remained on the air until 1936. The general story line was about a daredevil pilot during the early barnstorming days of aviation.

The radio show was popular—more than three million kids joined the Jimmie Allen Flying Club. The popularity led to a 1936 Paramount movie, The Sky Parade (Lynn book GL16). Allen's radio exploits took him all over the world on dangerous missions. He always traveled with his close friend, veteran pilot Speed Robertson..

The radio scripts were written by World War I flying aces, Robert M. Burtt and Wilfred G. Moore. They wrote this Big Little Book® specially for Whitman, drawing content from their earliest scripts, a time before Allen became a pilot. When the radio program came to an end, Moore wrote another hit radio show titled Captain Midnight.

In this BLB, Allen is introduced as "a wide-awake, clear-eyed youth of seventeen." He is a telegraph messenger at the Airways Station in Kansas. A gruff man asks him to send a coded telegram. Later Allen is told that a plane carrying a million dollars to a bank is on its way, but Allen figures out the plane is to be hijacked, so he joins his pilot friend, Speed Robertson, in a plan to thwart the hijacking. The two men are captured but escape in a small plane which crashes, and they are recaptured.

Throughout the story, Robertson is Allen's mentor. He does all the flying and continually teaches Allen a trick or two that he learned in World War I. After an exciting aerial dogfight near the end of the story, Robertson reveals that the FBI has made him a G-Man.

BLB BLOOPERS: Coauthor Wilfred G. Moore's first name is misspelled on the Title Page: Willfred. Also the title on the cover, Jimmie Allen in the Air Mail Robbery, is slightl different from the one on the title page: Jimmie Allen and the Air Mail Robbery.