Background: Civil Air Patrol, Part 2

After the war was over, the future of CAP was in doubt. As the nation demobilized and cut back on military and defense spending, the services were looking at where they spent every dollar. In March of 1946, the U.S. Army Air Force announced that it would cut off funding to CAP which had been transferred to the USAAF from the Office of Civilian Defense in 1943. Determined to save CAP, the commander of the USAAF, Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold convened a meeting in Washington of CAP's senior commanders in order to try and save the organization and chart a course for it's future. The result was the creation of Civil Air Patrol, Incorporated a civilian not for profit corporation. Later in 1948, Congress passed Public Law 557 making CAP the official civilian auxilliary of the newly created and independent United States Air Force.

It was at this time that CAP's three main missions were established: 1)Aerospace Education: CAP was to educate the public about aviation and flying and train future leaders for an increasingly aerospace and technology oriented society. 2)Cadet Programs: CAP was to establish a cadet training program to educate and develop youths as future leaders for service to the nation. 3)Emergency Services: CAP's most visible role was to provide an organization trained to provide search and rescue aircraft and ground teams to assist in locating downed aircraft, lost persons, and assistance to local authorities in the event of natural or manmade disasters.

CAP continues to fullfill these three core missions to this day. The technology and circumstances have changed some through the years, but what has remained unchanged is the volunteer spirit and dedication of CAP members.

The photo is another from the CAP online museum at www.gocivilairpatrol.com.

Background:Civil Air Patrol, Pt. 1

Most of the people you talk to have never heard of Civil Air Patrol. If they have heard of it, they don't don't know what it does or even if it's still around. So, I will try to give a short desrciption of the organization. First off, Civil Air Patrol or CAP(That's C-A-P when you say it. If you go around talking about CAP(like the thing you wear on your head) members tend to roll their eyes and explain the difference) is a non-profit corporation and the civilian auxilliary of the United States Air Force. CAP was founded on Dec. 1, 1941 under the Office of Civilian Defense of the War Department mostly due to the influence of Mr. Gill Robb Wilson, an aviation writer and leader, and under the direction of former NYC mayor Fiorello H. Laguardia, the director of the OCD. Major General John F. Curry was the first national commander.

Civil Air Patrol's most famous and visible job during the early days of WWII was the use of CAP planes to fill the gap in coastal patrol and anti-submarine protection for ships operating off the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. CAP pilots and observers flying general aviation type aircraft patrolled the coasts looking for German U-boats menacing Allied ships. At first these planes were unarmed. After several incidents in which CAP planes spotted enemy subs and had to watch them escape before armed military ships or aircraft arrived, CAP began jury-rigging mounts for small bombs and depth charges on their aircraft. The sights were also homemade and very crude and bombing techniques developed by trial and error. But CAP aircrews did attack at least 57 enemy subs and sank at least two with several more "probables". Twenty-six CAP members lost their lives in the 18 months of the mission. Other CAP missions were patrolling the U.S. borders with Mexico to prevent enemy infiltration, towing targets gunnery practice, doing small scale courier and cargo flights, and the activity that CAP is most known for today, search and rescue.

The picture here is another one from CAP's online museum at www.gocivilairpatrol.com.

DIGGING FOR BONES ON FACEBOOK

One of the tools I am using to compile a history of Franklin County and Group 12 is Facebook. Just this weekend, I was able to make contact with and become online friends with Rob Gerardi. Rob was the PAO or Public Affairs Officer back in the early 70's. I hope to tap his memories and maybe see if he has any other photos or information. I have been trying to locate as many of the old squadron as I can on Facebook. However, a lot of people have very common names or they put no photo and very little info on their page. Many of them do not visit their page regularly. Of course, many people just aren't on FB or MySpace. One old member I have been trying to get hold of, Kelley Wright, had a page on MySpace that had not been updated in over two years and much of it had been taken down. Hopefully, I will slowly but surely get in contact with a lot of these past members. Like I said earlier, I am going to try and get a scanner this weekend but until then I am going to try and post some pictures from CAP's early history. Most of these are out of the photo gallery of the CAP Online Museum at http://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/. Hope you like this one.

Charter Numbers

In this blog, I'll be using the original charter numbers for Franklin County Composite Squadron and for Group 12. Every CAP unit has a charter number. This used to be a five digit number that was unique to that unit. For example, Franklin County's charter number was 11212 and Group 12's was 11064. The numbers "11" , the first two digits of the charter number, designated units in the Illinois Wing. Different states/wings had different number designations. The last three numbers referred to the specific unit. Sometime in the late 90's or early 2000's the "11" was dropped and the two letter state abbreviation was adopted. So 11212 became IL212. At some point after this the region abbreviation was also added in so that the units became GLR-IL-XXX. But since I like the original version and because that's what we used for most of the squadron's existence, I will be using 11212 and 11064 for this blog. This will also be how I refer to most of the other units unless they were created after the adoption of the new system.

Just starting out!

The purpose of this blog is to get started in blogging and eventually website creation. While this will in some ways be my personal blog, most of it will be devoted to my ongoing history projects. I am going to attempt to put up an online history of the Franklin County Composite Squadron, 11212, and its next higher headquarters, Group 12. Both of these units were a part of the Illinois Wing, Civil Air Patrol and neither one exists anymore. While I was with them though, I had some of the greatest fun and adventures a kid and later adult in Southern Illinois could have. There were great people and good times. This blog is not sanctioned or sponsored by Civil Air Patrol and all the content is entirely mine. If you happen to stumble on to this blog, let me welcome you and invite you to come back and watch the site develop. It may start off kind of slow but I hope to keep plugging away at it. A bit about the name....Franklin County never really had an official nickname until the late 1990's when Kelly Robertson was the commander. As a student at Southern Illinois University, he had gone on a student backpacking trip out west. One of the catch phrases from that trip was FIDO or Forget It! Drive On! Anyway, due to some of the frustrations we ran into trying to run a small rural CAP squadron and our determination to accomplish our goals and missions in spite of those frustrations we adopted the FIDO! motto as a nickname, buzzword, or acknowledgement in the same vein as Hooah! Since the unit no longer exists except in the hearts and minds of it's former members, I refer to it on this site as Ol' Fido. And since I will try to dig up the history of the squadron and by extension the rest of the old Group 12 like a dog digs up old bones, I decided to call this blog Ol' Fido's Bones. FIDO!