Of 61,000 WWII Volunteers, Only A Few Hundred Remain
Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force,
is observing 70 years of vigilant service. But CAP says its
celebration won’t be complete until CAP’s earliest
members – now in their eighties and nineties – are
“rightly honored” with the Congressional Gold
Medal.
CAP, an all-volunteer service of more than 61,000 members, was
founded on December 1, 1941, less than a week before the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor led to America’s involvement in World
War II. Known at the time as the Coastal Patrol, members soon
proved their worth by conducting aerial missions at the request of
the Office of Civilian Defense, displaying heroism that discouraged
and eventually stopped deadly German U-boat attacks on supply ships
leaving American ports headed to support the Allied war effort.
The “subchasers” flew at great personal risk. In
all, 90 CAP planes were forced to ditch at sea. Of the 59 CAP
pilots killed during World War II, 26 were lost while on Coastal
Patrol duty and seven others were seriously injured while carrying
out the missions. Their wartime service was highly unusual because
they were civilian volunteers flying combat missions in their own
aircraft at a time when the military could not adequately respond
to the U-boat threat. The military decided to arm their aircraft
soon after the patrols began and, all told, they sank or damaged
two or more submarines and attacked 57.
Legislation has been introduced and is pending in both houses of
the U.S. Congress, H.R. 719 and S. 418, that would award CAP a
Congressional Gold Medal for its World War II service. It will be a
diminished victory, however, if none of the World War II-era CAP
members are alive to see this law’s passage.
“These members from our earliest days as an organization
helped save lives and preserve our nation’s freedom,”
said Maj. Gen. Chuck Carr, CAP’s national commander.
“They were truly unsung heroes of the war, using their small
private aircraft to search for enemy submarines close to
America’s shores, towing targets for military practice,
transporting critical supplies within the country and conducting
general airborne reconnaissance. They provided selfless service,
without fanfare, in defense of their homeland.”
Time, instead of a German submarine, is now the enemy of the
roughly 60,000 CAP volunteers from World War II. Only a few hundred
of them are still alive today.
“Each week, each month, others are lost,” said Carr.
“We want to make sure those who remain, and those who have
passed, are rightly honored for their great service to
America.”
These early CAP heroes included men like 94-year-old Charles
Compton, the father of ABC News Radio White House correspondent Ann
Compton. He was in his early 20s when he left dual jobs in Chicago
— one as an advertising salesman for the Daily News, the
other working in a plant that manufactured aircraft parts —
to go to the East Coast as a CAP citizen volunteer based on
“a desire to be more actively engaged in the war
effort.” There he was part of the flight staff of Coastal
Patrol Base 1 in Atlantic City, NJ, flying missions to search for
enemy submarines or to provide an escort for American convoys as
they sailed along the Eastern Seaboard.
During the war, CAP operated 21 such units up and down the
Eastern Seaboard and into the Gulf of Mexico. The duty was
dangerous, Charles Compton recalled. “There was nothing like
GPS,” he said, as he told about using partially sunken
American merchant ships, which were plentiful, as a navigational
tool.
Wylie Apte Sr., who died in 1970, was a seasoned pilot, having
flown with the Army Air Corps during World War I and later owning
and operating White Mountain Airport in North Conway, NH As a CAP
member, Apte was assigned to a unit of the Coastal Patrol based in
Portland, Maine, to search for enemy subs off the coasts of Maine,
New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Flying his own Waco YKS-7 biplane, Apte trailed an antenna,
longer than 100 yards, for communication back to his land base,
which would in turn be used to notify the military to dispatch
fighters and bombers in the event a sub was spotted.
Propelled by duty and love of country, Joseph W. Leonard joined
CAP the day it was established, six days before Pearl Harbor.
Leonard, who remained a CAP member until his death in March of this
year, was a member of the Pennsylvania Wing’s Chester
Squadron. He flew out of Coastal Patrol Base 2 at Rehoboth Beach,
DE. Base 2 was populated by such CAP heroes as Eddie Edwards, who
received the first Air Medal of World War II from President
Franklin D. Roosevelt for his daring all-night rescue of a downed
CAP pilot from the Atlantic waters.
In a journal he left behind, Leonard wrote: “On my day off
I was in the habit of going surfing. There I had a close encounter
with a torpedo that was fired at a convoy a few miles offshore and
missed. I was about a half mile beyond the breakers, watching a
convoy heading north. I was focusing on the ships and didn’t
notice the bubble trail approaching me until it was pretty close. I
rolled the surfboard to one side, and the German torpedo slid by
me.”
To support the Congressional Gold Medal legislation, CAP urges
everyone to contact federal legislators, both senators and
representatives, and ask them to cosponsor H.R. 719 and S. 418. In
both houses, two-thirds of the membership must sponsor a bill
before it can be brought up for a vote. Sample letters and other
details, including a list of current cosponsors, are available at
www.capmembers.com/goldmedal.