Junior G-Men of the Air

The Dead End Kids and the Little Tough Guys get together in this to circumvent the operations of a band of fifth columnists. The period covered in the first three chapters is immediately before Pearl Harbor and the leaders of the sabotage group are pictured as Americanized Japs. Ace (Billy Halop), leader of the kids and recent winner of a Junior Air Race, is walking along a highway; he is almost run down by a car driven by one of the villains. Obeying the tough guy code, he refuses to assist the police in running down the gang. But they decide that his recognition of one of their members endangers them. Kidnapped and placed in an airplane with one of the gang. Ace manages to escape when the plane crashes in front of a speeding express train. The saboteurs find out about an airplane muffler that his brother Eddie (Gene Reynolds) had invented. When the model is lost in the plane crash the leader determines on kidnapping Eddie and making him build another in the shop at the hideout. Eddie is captured but one of the kids witness the deed and the bunch, joined by Jerry (Frank Albertson) of the Junior "G" Men, start in pursuit. In the meantime the sabotage gang, having landed Eddie at the hideout decide on destruction of the incriminating plane and one of their number, engaged in executing the plan of destruction, bails out. As the plane crashes. Ace, believing that Eddie is still one of its passengers, braves the flames and is inside the fiercely burning plane when the time bomb, set by the gang, explodes. Lionell Atwill is cast as the leader of the saboteurs and has a well picked and convincing looking band of terrorists at his command. His hideout is an apparently innocent farm, equipped with an amazing array of intricate devices and electric-eye operated openings that are a revelation even in this type of film narrative.