US Air Force

 US Air Force

“He who dares, wins”. The British say.

The USAF was officially founded in 1947, by the signing of the National Security Act, but it’s story started almost 40 years earlier, as part of the Aeronautical Signal Corps.

Throughout WWI, it became obvious to a young Colonel named "Billy Mitchell", who was later appointed to Brigadier General, that air power was the future to warfare and extremely effective against what was considered the core of conventional military warfare; mainly ships, tanks and ground troops.

These opinions were considered subversive to the upper echelons of Army and Navy, who didn’t want any threat to their power base. They attempted to stifle Billy’s push for investment and innovation into air power and even demoted him back to Colonel. But he didn’t give up.

His continued efforts to invest in air power ostracized him from the brass and he was demoted as they attempted to sequester him. In my opinion his culminating act of defiance and victory occured in 1921.

That’s him, what’s special about this photo is the fact that old Billy is in a Non-Regulation uniform. Meaning he didn’t care about all the regulations and rules, he only cared about the mission and anything that got in the way of that be damned. however my point is that we are, as an organization, too concerned with regulations and ignore the culture that is degrading our ability to accomplish the mission.

He ordered the use of aircraft in fighting forest fires and border patrols. He also encouraged the staging of a transcontinental air race. He also encouraged Army pilots to break aviation records for speed, endurance and altitude. In short, he encouraged anything that would further develop the use of aircraft. He advocated the development of a number of aircraft innovations, including bomb-sights, sled-runner landing gear for winter operations, engine superchargers, and aerial torpedoes.

Mitchell had said that battleships could easily be sunk and at less cost by a small group of airplanes vice a traditional naval battle. Eventually tests were agreed to mainly by pressure from the public and despite MASSIVE handicaps introduced by the Navy (e.g. No large bombs used on smaller frigates, only two bombs dropped at a time, moving the testing area to a more remote location thereby limiting time on target) Billy Mitchell proved his theory correct and sunk their battleship. And yet, despite these herculean efforts, he died in 1936.

In 1940, the U.S. had a problem. Though we were technically not involved in WWII, we were supporting the UK in thier war against the Third Reich via lend lease. The supplies we sent them, coupled with thier island geography was turning the British Isles into a fortress; a fortress that one Adolf Hitler would have to invade.

To weaken British resolve, Hitler instructed Admiral Karl Donitz to blockade the UK using U-boats. Donitz simply told his captains to sink any freighter bound for Britain, including American flagged ships, as soon as they were found. A few unlucky ships, were torpedoed and sunk within the range of land based aircraft with widespread loss of life. Land based ASW (anti-submarine warfare) patrols were stepped up, but there simply were not enough aircraft to protect all mervhant seamen in American and adjacent waters.

Normally, this would be presumed an act of war, but U.S. isolationism kept us out of another European war, Hitler declared war on us the day after Pearl Harbor.

On December 1st, 1941, just six days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Civil Air Patrol was founded.

In 1943, the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) became a military organization and was placed under the command of the Army Air Forces.

By war's end, CAP had sunk two U-boats, forced 57 more to abort thier attacks, reported 175 to the USN and USCG, responded to 91 distress calls, and rescued 360 survivors. But deterence had an even larger effect. CAP flew 86,000 sorties, logging over 240,000 hours of operation in WWII. This was in addition to gunary training (target towing,) courier services, and pilot training.

In 1947, When the USAF seperated from the Army, CAP went with it. Truman signed Public Law 800-557, designating CAP as the official civilian auxillary of the USAF and would no longer be used for combat operations.

Today, CAP is part of the USAF's Total Force concept; on par with active duty, the USAF reserve, and the Air National Guard. CAP still flies USAF assigned missions.

We fly over 80% of inland search and rescue missions (air and ground.) We assist the USAF with system tests. We conduct disaster relief missions in the air and on the ground. We flew the first civilian aircraft to take off following 9/11 to image Ground Zero. We've conducted reconnisance for both the DEA and DHS, taking well over $1B worth of drugs off the street. We transport donor organs, blood, anti-venom, and nuclear medicine (which has an abysmal shelf life) from its point of production/collection to hospitals. We've gone as far as flying endangered species to zoos.

We've had members go overseas and assist during the Fukashima recovery (the earthquake/tsunami, not the nuclear disaster.) We have a team of radar technicians who analyzed radar data for MH370. And did I mention we do this for free? There are exactly 182 paid employees in CAP. 182 to 61,000 volunteers. Our aircraft cost about $100 an hour to fly. An A-10 costs almost $6,000 an hour and has a paid pilot and support crew.