Chick into Eaglet, OCD to DHS

Started by sardak, September 01, 2013, 07:18:37 AM

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sardak

TIME magazine, three weeks after CAP's "founding"

The U.S. At War, CIVILIAN DEFENSE: To Meet the Improbable
Monday, Dec. 22, 1941

The block wardens met at 8 p.m. in the Borough Hall. It was like a town meeting. The atmosphere was serious, solemn, a little ponderous. They were practical men, met to discuss practical steps to be taken. Nobody suggested the extreme improbability of the Luftwafte bombing this little country town; all the discussion, all the questions centered about the practical details of what to do when the Luftwaffe came.

The chairman, a serious young man, talked of incendiary bombs (one plane can carry as many as 2,000), of the consequences of a lucky hit on exposed telephone wires, or whether or not it would be a good idea to use Boy Scouts as messengers during a raid. (When someone suggested that young boys ought to be kept out of harm's way, a veteran father said, "Hell, if there are bombs dropping, you won't be able to keep the kids indoors anyway.") A man from the gas company feelingly urged his fellow wardens not to attempt any repair jobs on broken gas-mains, etc., but to send for him—"and for God's sake don't monkey with any loose wires."

All over the U.S. last week, but particularly along both flanks of the U.S., such meetings were held, such plans discussed. Civilian-defense offices up & down both coasts were logjammed with applicants. Mayor LaGuardia's Office of Civilian Defense moved too fast to keep track of its own progress. But this week the civilian-defense picture was taking shape.

> Hottest area for defense enrollments was New England, which leads the nation with 1,287 local councils. Coolest was the Midwest. In Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin are only 251 councils altogether.

> Though men are wanted (for air-raid wardens, bomb squads, etc.) the big need is for able women. OCD estimated that it could use 500,000 women for home nursing, another 100,000 for nurses' aides. Some 300,000 women are wanted to take charge of OCD's nutrition program, 100,000 more to look after school lunches.

> Mayor LaGuardia announced that he will enlist 90,000 licensed pilots, 90,000 student pilots, 100,000 ground workers to serve in a Civil Air Patrol for the war's duration. Under the command of Major General John F. Curry of the U.S. Army Air Corps, CAP will operate from 2,000 airports in the U.S. which are not used for military or commercial flights.

Chief hitch in the Mayor's program so far is lack of air-raid facilities. It would take a mort of heavy cloth to blackout New York City's 10,000,000 windows. Most big cities are so noisy that civilians cannot hear air-raid warnings. New York's Board of Estimate last week appropriated $25,000 to buy sirens. In the newspapers, OCD took full-page advertisements telling civilians what to do ("Keep cool. Stay at home. Put out lights.") if raiders come.

In all Manhattan, a preliminary survey disclosed virtually no adequate shelters. (OCD does not consider subways adequate—they are too near the surface, covered with a vulnerable network of wires, pipes, cables.) In Stamford, Conn, an old bank vault, nine feet under the sidewalk, was converted into a bomb shelter last March—as a money-raising stunt by British War Reliefers. Detroit, like Chungking, is well supplied with natural shelters. Under the city, 1,100 feet down, are Detroit's old salt mines, with 25 miles of passageways, all dry, healthful, air-conditioned.
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TIME again

Army & Navy And Civilian Defense: Chick into Eaglet
Monday, Feb. 02, 1942

The Civil Air Patrol, a chick of the defense program, hatched in the disorderly nest of the Office of Civilian Defense, last week began to look like an eaglet.

When war first broke, Washington grounded all civilian flyers, suspended their flying licenses until they could prove that they were citizens of the U.S. or its Allies. They were permitted to make strictly regulated flights anywhere except over a 150-mile strip along the West Coast and over designated military areas.

Some 100,000 citizens, 40% of them graduates of the Civil Aeronautics training program, had licenses to fly, owned 27,500 certified planes. Army & Navy had already tapped this source for flying cadets, had taken over some private planes. But OCD figured that thousands who were unavailable for military service because of age, sex, physical defects, would still be available for much useful home-front work: carrying messages, patrol work, etc. The Army thought there might be something in the idea, assigned Major General John F. Curry to head newborn CAP.

Last week, in Ohio, CAPsters air-patrolled two gas mains which supply nitroglycerine plants, air-guarded a reservoir near Youngstown. CAP enrollments had reached 15,000, were coming in at the rate of 800 a day. A "wing commander" had been appointed in every State. CAP said it could use some 100,000 non-flying recruits: as ground crews, as drivers to taxi Army pilots from railroad stations to airports, in humdrum but necessary office work.

Mike