REMEMBERING THE GROUND OBSERVER CORPS PART 1

I WAS LEAFING THROUGH MY AVIATION SHELVES, a collection, I immodestly note, better than in many secondhand bookshops I peruse from time to time.

This includes gems such as “Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft—1913,” here at SimanaitisSays, August 12, 2014 (just about two years after establishing this website). “When I was a lad,” I wrote back then, “I thought it was cool that a girl named Jane knew all about aircraft. It wasn’t until later that I learned the name was Fred T. Jane, and that he’d been publishing his authoritative annuals of aviation data since 1909.”

AWOL, But Fondly Remembered. These aerobibliographic musings brought to mind a book that’s currently AWOL from the shelves, even after my major garage sorting of ’22. This is the Ground Observer Corps Manual, which in turn brought to mind the Ground Observer Corps, Wikipedia describing it as “the name of two American civil defense organizations during the middle 20th century.” 

What a quaint way referring to a piece of my memory: “the middle 20th century.”

Here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, we delve into history of that era.

Bruce D. Callander wrote about “The Ground Observer Corps,” in Air & Space Forces Magazine, February 1, 2006. He recounted, “Before electronic sensors guarded the approaches to North America, before satellite warning systems peered down from space, before air defense aircraft carried identification equipment, the U.S. had the Ground Observer Corps.”

He continued, “In World War II, and then again during the early years of the Cold War, the nation’s air warning system lay largely in the hands of the corps, a U.S. military adjunct composed almost entirely of volunteers, intently studying wall charts and model airplanes to memorize the characteristics of ‘ours’ and ‘theirs.’ ” 

And, I can add, studying the Ground Observer Corps Manual, of which more anon.

Callander noted, “They were teenagers and housewives, manning search towers and bare rooftops, equipped only with binoculars. Through the war years and most of the 1950s, GOC members spotted and plotted the movements of potentially hostile aircraft. These almost always turned out to be friendly, but they might well have been intruders bent on mounting a surprise attack.”

Poster from WWII era. Image from Wikipedia.

GOC Methodology. Callander described, “The observers worked from any site that offered a clear and unobstructed view of the sky. In Hinsdale, Ill., it was atop the Community House. Code-named Coco-Metro-Zero-Four-Roger, the observation post was little more than an unroofed plywood pen about six feet square, unfurnished except for a telephone. When an observer saw an airplane, he logged it onto a clipboard and reported it to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the region’s Air Force-operated filter center.” 

“Over the years of the Cold War,” Callander recounted, “more than 800,000 volunteers stood alternating shifts at 16,000 observation posts and 73 filter centers.”

Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll continue gleaning tidbits from Callander’s article, together with reminiscences of my own. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025