CAP on Wikipedia today

[Майор Хаткевич]

Yea, that's exactly it.

Proud to be helping Civil Air Patrol continue serving our community state and nation! Happy 73rd Birthday CAP. To everyone volunteering, keep it up! Your doing good work everyday.

Response Pers 1: Love that pic

Me: We never sunk any subs. Good myth though.

OP: Didnt we hit 2?

Me: No official records found. Was an interesting discussion on CAPTalk a few months or so ago. NHQ Historian was "attacked" for expressing that view.

Response Pers 1: Cuz CAPtalk is the official channel of all things CAP.

Me: More along the lines of "our own Chief Historian can't find any proof".

I get that people get attached to our organization's history as "our own"...but c'mon.

[LSThiker]

I get that people get attached to our organization's history as "our own"...but c'mon.

And we still have people that deny the Jewish Holocaust.  They try to blame all of the death on Typhus, which is wrong.  Some people are just not willing to change their opinions to meet the facts.   

[MisterCD]

As a professional public historian, I realize I cannot please everyone no matter what I do, but my obligation is to provide my employer with the most accurate evidence possible.

And I might also point out that even I appreciate when records are missing or uncertain, and also where myth fills in gaps.

But in honor of those raising issues of bombing whales (which may have happened but again I lack hard evidence we did...so back off Greenpeace) I provide you all with this to at least make a few chuckle.



Bottom line is CAP coastal patrol personnel saved countless merchant vessels, lives, and millions in cargo from enemy attack, all resources that helped win and shorten a most horrid war. It is a privilege to help with the Congressional Gold Medal effort to honor our World War II CAP veterans, and I can only hope in our final days that the contributions of many of us today will also be recognized.

[MSG Mac]

"Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man."

- Bertrand Russell in "The Scientific Outlook" (1931)

I'll take the word of the Nobel Prize Winner

[James Shaw]

As a professional public historian, I realize I cannot please everyone no matter what I do, but my obligation is to provide my employer with the most accurate evidence possible.

And I might also point out that even I appreciate when records are missing or uncertain, and also where myth fills in gaps.

But in honor of those raising issues of bombing whales (which may have happened but again I lack hard evidence we did...so back off Greenpeace) I provide you all with this to at least make a few chuckle.



Bottom line is CAP coastal patrol personnel saved countless merchant vessels, lives, and millions in cargo from enemy attack, all resources that helped win and shorten a most horrid war. It is a privilege to help with the Congressional Gold Medal effort to honor our World War II CAP veterans, and I can only hope in our final days that the contributions of many of us today will also be recognized.

So instead of Border Patrol it would have been Blubber Patrol?
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

[LSThiker]

"Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man."

- Bertrand Russell in "The Scientific Outlook" (1931)

I'll take the word of the Nobel Prize Winner

You do not need to.  What Bertrand Russell is saying is quite simple.  In the sciences, you cannot take anything for absolute truth.  That is, everything, even those supported by strong evidence or considered theories or laws, are subject to criticism and falsifying.  In order for something to be considered absolute truth, you must test it at all places in the universe at all times in the universe (from start to finish), which of course is impossible.  Any person that takes something as absolute truth is an inexact man.  Traditionally, this is meant as a person of religion that claims his/her holy books are absolutely true and believes they are not subject to criticism. 

This is true for science and is the reason we report significance and p-values.

[AirAux]

LSThiker noted: "And we still have people that deny the Jewish Holocaust.  They try to blame all of the death on Typhus, which is wrong.  Some people are just not willing to change their opinions to meet the facts."  How come we never talk about the 10,000,000 Christians killed during WWII?  I mean historically, of course.. 

[NIN]

Hey, in the early days things were still a little goofy.

John H. Curry?

(the postmark on that card is 22 Jan 1942. CAPF1. Someone at "HQ" got some ribbing for that one for a few years, I bet!)

ETA: Hey, things happen. It doesn't mean his middle initial is "H" after the fact)

[LSThiker]

LSThiker noted: "And we still have people that deny the Jewish Holocaust.  They try to blame all of the death on Typhus, which is wrong.  Some people are just not willing to change their opinions to meet the facts."  How come we never talk about the 10,000,000 Christians killed during WWII?  I mean historically, of course..

Who forgets about the non-Jewish victims of the holocaust?

However, to address what you are ultimately trying to elude to is, the 6 million Jews killed were targeted because they were Jewish.  Christian victims were not targeted because they were Christian specifically, with the exception of the 12,000 Jehovah's Witnesses.  The non-Jewish victims were targeted because they were Slavs, Poles, Serb, Soviet POWs, Romani, disabled, homosexual, non-white, non-Nazi political left.  They happened to be Christian or other religions.  While the majority of non-Jewish victims were Christians, they were not solely Christian.   

Also, I think you are referring to that email chain that went around some years back about 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, 1,900 Catholic priests.  This is a misleading email.  If you look at the Russian deaths, there were about 20 million Russian deaths throughout World War 2.  This includes:  civilians due to famine and disease, battlefield, and civilian deaths due to military activity. 

Overall, there were more than 60 million deaths during World War II (which includes all people for all causes related to WWII).  While I am sure that there were at least 10 million Christians in this 60 million deaths, but to imply we do not talk about those 10 million is simply wrong.  We do every time we discuss WWII victims. 

And last I checked, no one claims that World War 2 did not happen, but people absolutely claim that the Nazi's did not kill any one in concentration camps.  This denial of the Jewish Holocaust victims (but not necessarily excluding the other 5 million non-Jewish victims) is my point.

Bottom line is, yes we do talk about the other millions of people (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Native American, and other religions) every time we discuss World War II.

[FW]

^ +1

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program..

For some reason, I remember seeing a version of the LaGuardia letter dated 1 December 1941. Am I mistaken?

[MisterCD]

Here is the big part of the confusion, Fred. When the organizational handbook was distributed in mid-December, the date on the admin order was listed as 1 December. Pearl Harbor, printing difficulties, and admin holdups (appointing all the wing commanders) threw this off. The CAP confidential correspondence folder in the Office of Civilian Defense records at the National Archives put the timeline in perspective, particularly Gill Robb Wilson's and Reed Landis' personal correspondence with governors and state civil aviation authorities.

The docs in question, as well as the original press release for CAP which was covered in papers, either the late editions of 8 December or the morning editions on 9 December.  For folks wondering where the administrative order copy I have came from, it was mailed to North Carolina's governor, along with the press release. The same information was also found in the papers of Governor John Bricker in Ohio.

Admin Order signed and dated 8 December


Page from the organizational handbook post dated back to 1 December






Chicago Tribune, 9 December 1941

[Eclipse]

280,000 members and 23,000 airplanes?

What were the real numbers at CAP's wartime height?

[FW]

Thanks, Frank.  I knew I wasn't going senile (yet). So, can we suppose that, although the order was dated on 8 December, CAP was actually formally established on the 1st, and that the "priorities of the times" were the basis in the delay in getting the order published?

[Devil Doc]

Heh, never realized I passed by the original ILWG HQ on the train hundreds of times!

https://www.google.com/maps/place/1334+N+Kostner+Ave,+Chicago,+IL+60651/@41.9058178,-87.735755,1057m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x880fccd7b8a61eb9:0xb3a939af3296488f

What are all them cars doing there? That many people shop at Menards?

[Майор Хаткевич]

Heh, never realized I passed by the original ILWG HQ on the train hundreds of times!

https://www.google.com/maps/place/1334+N+Kostner+Ave,+Chicago,+IL+60651/@41.9058178,-87.735755,1057m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x880fccd7b8a61eb9:0xb3a939af3296488f

What are all them cars doing there? That many people shop at Menards?

Junk Yard. Apparently the address was the ILWG CCs home, which later became a warehouse.

[MisterCD]

Thanks, Frank.  I knew I wasn't going senile (yet). So, can we suppose that, although the order was dated on 8 December, CAP was actually formally established on the 1st, and that the "priorities of the times" were the basis in the delay in getting the order published?

Fred, from what I think can be said is that the intention was to formally establish the organization (more than just a tiny headquarters) and introduce the CAP to the nation on 1 December, but delays in printing, administrative matters, and then the Japanese attack, forced a rushed formal authorization on 8 December. I see no need to change the birthday from 1 December, and feel it appropriate to consider it the day things began in a more formalized sense. The issue of 8 December makes for a very interesting anecdote in our heritage from an administrative perspective. As they say, "the best laid plans of mice and men. . . ."

[The CyBorg is destroyed]

And we still have people that deny the Jewish Holocaust.  They try to blame all of the death on Typhus, which is wrong.  Some people are just not willing to change their opinions to meet the facts.   

I've had some heated "discussions" on places like Yahoo with these wannabe Heinie Himmlers, and a couple in person.  They crack me up worse than Oberst Klink or Feldwebel Schultzie ever did on "Hogan's Heroes."

As far as I'm concerned, 1 December 1941 IS CIVIL AIR PATROL DAY.  I've never heard otherwise

[Private Investigator]

Chicago Tribune, 9 December 1941

In the 1940s people did not know how to spell Civil Air Patrol   

[Майор Хаткевич]

My most recent one was "Civil Aviation Patrol".

[The CyBorg is destroyed]

Britain had something roughly similar, the Civil Air Guard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Air_Guard

That eventually became the Royal Observer Corps, which was entirely ground-based:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Observer_Corps