Sky King began on ABC in 1946 and moved to Mutual, following Schuyler "Sky" King, an Arizona rancher and former navy flyer who used his aircraft the Songbird to run down rustlers and fugitives.
The run
- Network
- Blue / ABC / Mutual
- Years active
- 1942–1948
- Surviving broadcasts
- 73
- Genre
- kids
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948. Chester Stratton and later Albert Aley flew the fifteen-minute serial through wartime and post-war adventures for an after-school audience. Public-domain transfers from the Internet Archive.
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
3 dated broadcasts across 7 years on the air, with 6 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 1947, in original transmission order.
- 1. Mystery of The Wailing Witches (1947-11-14) · 14 Nov 1947
- 2. Planes Crash Likely · Date unknown
- 3. Mystery of The Vanishing Men · 14 Jul 1947
- 01
Mystery of The Wailing Witches (1947-11-14)
14 Nov 1947 · 13 min
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948.
- 02
Planes Crash Likely
Date unknown · 14 min
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948.
- 03
Mystery of The Vanishing Men
14 Jul 1947 · 14 min
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948.
- 04
Riddle of The Ghostly Avengers (1947-08-04)
4 Aug 1947 · 13 min
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948.
- 05
Riddle of The Ghostly Avengers (1947-08-05)
5 Aug 1947 · 13 min
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948.
- 06
Riddle of The Ghostly Avengers (1947-08-19)
19 Aug 1947 · 14 min
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948.
- 07
Riddle of The Ghostly Avengers (1947-08-21)
21 Aug 1947 · 14 min
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948.
- 08
Riddle of The Ghostly Avengers (1947-08-22)
22 Aug 1947 · 14 min
Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airwaves, began on the Blue Network in 1942, adapted from the All-American Comics character, and continued on ABC and Mutual until 1948.
Same night on the air
14 Jul 1947
Everything else the archive still holds from the night of 14 Jul 1947.

Broadcast on Syndicated. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Old Time Radio Researchers collection (public domain).
Same seasons
kids on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
The children's serial
Fifteen minutes, a cliffhanger, and a promise to be back tomorrow. Kids' audio still runs on the shape the Yukon and Speed Gibson serials cut.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of Hop Harrigan
Modern series carrying this form forward.
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More to explore
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