Radio Drama · The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection
Whistler USAFE aircheck recordings
- Heard
- 1952–1955
- Episodes
- 32
These are 1960s airchecks from Armed Forces Radio, likely recorded on home equipment by a service person stationed in Europe or a member of their family. Some of the recordings sound as if they were recorded by a microphone in front of a speaker. Others sound like a properly connected radio to a home tape recorder.
More about it
USAFE was the Defense Department organization that commanded the various aspects of the air forces. Their message in sponsoring these programs was usually to promote educational initiatives for service personnel. Most of those advertising-style messages were edited out in the original recordings. They were not usually clean edits and can be easily detected.
In the early days of collecting radio programs, there were few episodes of The Whistler from original transcriptions. For many late 1960s and early 1970s collectors, these episodes were the majority of episodes in their collections. Since that time, most of the recordings of the network broadcasts have become available, and usually in nice sound. Still, however, few broadcast recordings exist after 1951, and these home recordings remain the primary surviving episodes from the later years of the series.
The episodes have always been in relatively poor sound, with electric hum and strong background noise. Over the years, collectors have tried to adjust sound with equalizers and other equipment. They were working with tape, which meant that while they were attempting to make the programs sound better, they…
Episodes, in broadcast order
Where it comes from 1
The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.
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Whistler USAFE aircheck recordings
the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.
From the Joe Hehn Memorial Collection, at the Internet Archive.
More from The Joe Hehn Memorial Collection
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
1937–1962
Lux Radio Theater
1935–1955
The Whistler
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Richard Diamond, Private Detective
NBC · 1949–1953
X Minus One
NBC · 1955–1958
Escape
1947–1954
Let George Do It
1946–1954
The Lone Ranger
Mutual · 1935–1955
Broadway is My Beat
CBS · 1949–1954
Night Beat
1949–1953
My Favorite Husband
CBS · 1948–1951
Screen Guild Theater
1939–1952
Radio drama, old-time radio and historic broadcasts from the Internet Archive (its Old Time Radio collection with the Old Time Radio Researchers' sets, WWII Era Audio Recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives, the Radio Haiti Archive, German radio plays and listeners' uploads), Wikimedia Commons (with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's broadcasts) and the Library of Congress. Every episode plays from its archive, which this site does not copy; rights are as each archive states them. Nothing here is called public domain on this site's say-so. In the United States, sound recordings first fixed before 15 February 1972 have federal protection under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, for most until 2067 at the latest, so most American radio of the 1930s to the 1950s is not in the public domain there. Each set shows the licence, mark or statement its archive gives, and says whose it is. Horror, crime, war and westerns are for teenage and adult profiles, racist caricature for adults only, and children’s profiles hear what was made for children. More about these archives.