Adelaide's 5AD makes radio serial national hit 'The Air Adventures of Biggles', starring Keith McDonald, from 1945

5AD radio station manager and later ADS Channel 7 manager Keith McDonald played the lead role of Biggles in the radio serial.

Another Adelaide national radio serial success in from 1945 was The Air Adventures of Biggles, made at the 5AD studios by Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd, and starring Keith McDonald as the famous air ace Biggles.

McDonald was 5AD’s station manager and went on to become the first manager of ADS Channel 7 when television hit Adelaide in 1959. 5AD had already achieved success with the long-running school classroom comedy Yes What? 

Even though the Biggles books by Captain W. E. Johns were popular worldwide, Australia was the only country in the world to make them, under licence, into a radio serial.

The Air Adventures of Biggles was the first of the many action/adventure serials for younger listeners that were enormously popular on radio around Australia in the latter half of the 1940s and through the 1950s.

The first 209 episodes were made in Adelaide before it was moved to Sydney in 1949 to reach 1,256 15-minute episodes by 1954. This spared Adelaide producing the increasingly racist tone of W.E, Johns’ post war output.

One change that was made from the books to the radio serials was the introduction of a female lead character, Patsy. Several Biggles purists were most upset at this change at the time  and Johns apparently ended the Australian radio licence contract after receiving complaints from young readers that the storyline had made Biggles “go soft” by taking up a blonde female lover.

The shows themselves have been described as exciting, being well produced with a strong narrative, strong music and effective sound effects. One commentator noted that “in the opinion of many, they represent the finest example of serial radio - ever - in the world.”