Illinois Wing in WW2

[Smithsonia]

WW2 Service by the Illinois Wing as of 1943. This is an extensive article from the extensive collection of Mark Hess at Team Cap.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/53485356/WWII-1943-CAP-Illinois-Wing

Give it time to load. Depending on your screen size you might want to manipulate the "blow-up" function. You'll see in '43, The Illinois Wing had
250 planes, 500 pilots, and 500 more in training.

[Eclipse]

Now you're just making me sad.

Palwaukee inherited the records of the Glenview Squadron that was at Glenview NAS.  Within those record were notes that indicated that at
one point the unit had 15 aircraft and 150 cadets alone. 

Granted that was a time when the use of member-owned aircraft was prevalent.  It would be interesting to know when you read some
of the old articles how many of those aircraft were corporate-owned.  I doubt the Wing actually owned 250 planes, but still...

[BillB]

During World War II CAP had no planes all were privately owned. In 1946 USAF loaned L-4's and L-5's to CAP and they retained USAF markings. It wasn't till the early 1950's that the CAP Corporation had aircraft and those were surplus L-4's L-5's and L-16's.  It was almost 50 years before the number of Corporate aircraft became available and the use of private aircraft started to be discouraged

[RiverAux]

I think I've seen mention of planes being loaned to CAP to train potential Army pilots during WWII, but they weren't in any great number IIRC.

[Smithsonia]

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Billl B;
CAP had lots and lots of airplanes in WW2. Some were owned by the Air Corps, then depot discharged and given to the CAP or Civilian Pilot Training Program. I oughta know, I owned a '41 Taylorcraft L2 that was depot'd in '43. The Army didn't need my LBird because they had the more robust L-5s coming online. Mine wound up in Oklahoma's Wing. It was a Liaison Bird that supported courier duties at Ft. Sill and Wichita's Boeing factory. Being that its tanks had 2 hours of gas... it didn't go far. It didn't go fast... but it did go.

There are many sources of CAP air craft in WW2. Some were military... CAP flew several Air Corp C- 46s in the courier service. In fact the C-46 Air Crews that flew the Seattle to Wichita route had more hours on the Army's books than any other crew in WW2. They average 800-1000 hours of flying each year and each pilot over a 4 year period. That's a bunch. That's a four hour mission every - day 5 days a weeks - for 250 days a year - for 4 years. If you include bad weather days and flying fewer than 5 days a week for various reasons like mechanical breakdowns... then you have 6-7 hours of flying every good mission day.

Other contributors of CAP used aircraft are other service branches, airlines, state governments, and allied agencies. Remember - we had pilots - we had permission to fly - we could get gas - most everyone else had no one around to fly as all the other pilots were bombing Berlin. We flew everything under the sun and moon. We weren't Kings in WW2 but we may have been their pilots.

[flyboy53]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Billl B;
CAP had lots and lots of airplanes in WW2. Some were owned by the Air Corps, then depot discharged and given to the CAP or Civilian Pilot Training Program. I oughta know, I owned a '41 Taylorcraft L2 that was depot'd in '43. The Army didn't need my LBird because they had the more robust L-5s coming online. Mine wound up in Oklahoma's Wing. It was a Liaison Bird that supported courier duties at Ft. Sill and Wichita's Boeing factory. Being that its tanks had 2 hours of gas... it didn't go far. It didn't go fast... but it did go.

There are many sources of CAP air craft in WW2. Some were military... CAP flew several Air Corp C- 46s in the courier service. In fact the C-46 Air Crews that flew the Seattle to Wichita route had more hours on the Army's books than any other crew in WW2. They average 800-1000 hours of flying each year and each pilot over a 4 year period. That's a bunch. That's a four hour mission every - day 5 days a weeks - for 250 days a year - for 4 years. If you include bad weather days and flying fewer than 5 days a week for various reasons like mechanical breakdowns... then you have 6-7 hours of flying every good mission day.

Other contributors of CAP used aircraft are other service branches, airlines, state governments, and allied agencies. Remember - we had pilots - we had permission to fly - we could get gas - most everyone else had no one around to fly as all the other pilots were bombing Berlin. We flew everything under the sun and moon. We weren't Kings in WW2 but we may have been their pilots.

Guess I like to see the photos and pictures detailing this. I didn't think CAP got any military stuff until after the war.

For that matter, the only other wartime mission that I'm personally aware of is at least one pilot from the Pennsylvania Wing who was ordered to active service as a flight instructor. He's long gone now so that's history thats lost. I often wondered, however, what it must have been like for an aviation cadet to be given primary flight instruction from a CAP Captain.

[ol'fido]

WIWAC at the '81 ILWG Flight Encampment about the only "corporate" aircraft used were the gliders and the O-1 Birddogs they used for towing the gliders. I was in the "power" track and flew in my IPs personal C-172.

[Smithsonia]

In the era of which we are speaking, we weren't a corporation so we didn't have "corporate" aircraft. We had depot'd Air Corps aircraft assigned for civilian use. As far as I know this happened throughout the war. It was assigned to CAP, Civilian Defense Authority, Civilian Pilot Training Program, etc. It then could be repainted using CAP colors.

How the paperwork was handled and who paid the bills, I couldn't say. It seems to me that the aircraft that I owned had both Military and Civilian paperwork, log books, and people working on the aircraft during the war. The military log books were retained by the Army, so my log books started in '43 once the plane was depot'd to civilian service. When in the CAP it had signoffs at Tinker, Vance, Pratt KS, Oklahoma City and El Paso Air Stations/bases.It also had work at Broken Arrow, Stillwater, Tulsa and those seemed to be civilian signoffs. In the 50s it was sold to a farmer and after that had regular civilian service after that. I sold the plane a year ago so I no longer have the log books. All of this is from memory and a file I had when it was in the Confederate/Commemorative Air-Force.