The Ground Observer Corps Public Relations and the Cold War in the 1950S

The Ground Observer Corps Clymer The Ground Observer Corps Public Relations and the Cold War in the 1950s ✣ Kenton Clymer Ground Observer Corps, Hurray! Protects our Nation every day. Protects our ºag, Red, White and Blue, They protect everyone, even you. Always on guard with Watchful eyes, Never tiring they search the skies. From now to eternity we shall be free, America’s guarded by the G. O. C. Tony Parinelli, Leominster, MA1 This article examines the development and demise of one of the least studied elements of U.S. homeland defense efforts in the 1950s: the Ground Ob- server Corps (GOC). In an earlier article I explored the origins of the GOC.2 Here I focus on the development of the organization in the mid-1950s until its deactivation in 1959, showing that the GOC never came close to achieving its goals for recruitment and effectiveness. Despite the grave shortcomings of the GOC, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) continued to support the organization, evidently because the GOC served the public relations interests of the Air Force, U.S. air defense, and, more generally, the Cold War policies of the United States. The lack of widespread public support for the GOC provides some credence to the contrarian view about the overwhelming fear of an im- minent Soviet nuclear strike on the United States that is commonly said to have characterized U.S. society in the 1950s.3 1. Tony Parinelli, “G.O.C.,” in Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (DDEL), White House Central Files (WHCF), Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers, Ofªcial File 1953–1961, Box 82, Folder 3-C-14 (1). 2. Kenton Clymer, “U.S. Homeland Defense in the 1950s: The Origins of the Ground Observer Corps,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 75, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 835–859. 3. Orthodox accounts of American anti-Communist and anti-Soviet fears in the 1950s include Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 15, No. 1, Winter 2013, pp. 34–52 © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 34 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00307 by guest on 28 September 2021 The Ground Observer Corps The GOC was an organization born of the Cold War. Its roots, however, stretched back to the period immediately preceding U.S. entry into World War II, when ground observers were part of the Aircraft Warning Services. They continued to serve in observation posts throughout the war. Afterward, as relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated into the Cold War, U.S. of- ªcials increasingly feared that a new war would occur, one that would proba- bly include Soviet air attacks on the U.S. homeland. But those who feared an attack faced a major problem: the American public was insufªciently con- cerned about the Soviet threat to rally to the colors. The Soviet Union had, after all, been a crucial wartime ally in the defeat of Nazi Germany; the U.S. army had hastily demobilized; and people wanted to return to “normalcy” after a brutal war. They might well be tempted to revert to an isolationist for- eign policy. To counter this, national security ofªcials set out to educate the public about the threat, even raising the prospects of war against the former ally. This required creating a certain level of fear without, however, sowing panic and with assurances that war would not be all that devastating.4 Among their recommendations was the creation of a strong civil defense capability. The advocates of a strong national security state won a major legislative victory in 1947 with the passage of the National Security Act. The act recon- ªgured the government to wage the Cold War and established the basis for civil defense.5 In this context the idea emerged of a system of ground observers to help detect Soviet nuclear bombers if they were ordered to attack the Richard Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (London: Methuen, 1960); Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert, “U.S. Culture and the Cold War,” in Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001); Stephen J. Whitªeld, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Tom Englehardt, The End of Victory Culture, rev. ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007); and Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Contrarian views include Peter Filene, “‘Cold War Culture’ Doesn’t Say It All,” in Kuznick and Gilbert, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture; and Richard M. Fried, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-War America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 4. The tensions and inconsistencies involved in these matters are astutely examined in Andrew D. Grossman, Neither Dead nor Red: Civil Defense and American Political Development during the Early Cold War (New York: Routledge, 2001) and in Michael J. Hogan’s comprehensive book, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1998). 5. For general background about the origins of the national security state, see Hogan, A Cross of Iron. For the larger cultural milieu, see Whitªeld, The Culture of the Cold War; James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); and David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard, 1993). Among the important studies of civil defense in the 1950s are Grossman, Neither Dead nor Red; Laura McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Dee Garrison, Bracing for Armageddon: Why Civil Defense Never Worked (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and David F. Krugler, This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 35 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00307 by guest on 28 September 2021 Clymer United States. Radar, still in its infancy, was not fully deployed and in any event had numerous limitations, the most notable of which was that it could not yet detect low-ºying aircraft. Ground observers were needed until such time as radar could provide more protection.6 Over the next few years, discussion, planning, and even some testing of a prototype ground observation organization took place. But not until 1950 was the organization ofªcially established. Despite growing concerns at high levels in the government, there was not a sufªcient sense of urgency until the Soviet Union detonated its ªrst nuclear bomb in August 1949. Only then did civil defense become a high priority for Harry S. Truman’s administration. The president, who had previously favored only a modest civil defense initia- tive, “did an about-face,” and “civil defense planning went from low-key to frenetic.”7 Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, who had wanted to keep defense costs low, was soon gone, and the administration adopted an expansive security study, NSC 68, that called for greatly increased defense expenditures. NSC-68 was fully implemented after another shock: the outbreak of the Ko- rean War in June 1950, which at the time was widely understood as an act of Soviet-inspired aggression that foreshadowed further Soviet military advances elsewhere. Amid these surging fears of vulnerability, Congress passed the Civil Defense Act that created the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA). Another result was the formation of the GOC. The GOC consisted of observation posts, initially limited to states lo- cated on the coasts, the Canadian border, and the Great Lakes. The system was later expanded to all 48 states. The volunteer observers looked for aircraft and conveyed news of sightings via telephone to “ªlter centers.” Although a rigorous study of who volunteered has not yet been done, photographs and published accounts suggest that the volunteers were widely representative of the general populace. They ranged in age from preteens to senior citizens, in- cluded men and women and people of various racial groups. Filter center volunteers, on the other hand, may well have been predominantly middle-class women. In New Haven, women constituted some 98 percent of the volunteers, although the more important positions (the “ªlterers”) went to men. A few USAF ofªcers were assigned to the ªlter centers, but civilian volunteers, who plotted the trajectories of reported aircraft on large tables, constituted the overwhelming majority of the centers’ personnel.8 6. Very little scholarship has appeared about the Ground Observer Corps. In addition to Clymer, “Homeland Defense,” see Denys Volan, “The History of the Ground Observer Corps,” Ph.D. Diss, University of Colorado, 1969; and Kenneth Schaffel, The Emerging Shield: The Air Force and the Evo- lution of Continental Air Defense (Washington, DC: Ofªce of Air Force History, USAF, 1991). 7. McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home, p. 14. 8. Clymer, “Homeland Defense,” pp. 849–850. 36 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00307 by guest on 28 September 2021 The Ground Observer Corps Organizationally, the GOC was a strange hybrid. It was treated as part of the USAF’s Air Defense capability, and the various Air Defense headquarters across the country were charged with overseeing its activities. For recruitment purposes it was often referred to as an “auxiliary” of the Air Force, thus pre- sumably making it more glamorous and attractive than other civil defense or- ganizations, most of which, despite the Soviet test, had trouble recruiting volunteers.

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