Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Eyes Aloft
Polistra has often bemoaned Sultan Bush's peculiar refusal to involve citizens in the war effort, and described how FDR did it.
The Ground Observer Corps, also called the Air Warning Service, kept 150,000 unpaid volunteers busy watching for Jap planes near the coasts.
A new addition to the Old-time Radio section at Archive.org is a full season of Eyes Aloft, produced in Hollywood for the benefit of the Ground Observer Corps in the West. The programs were high quality mixtures of drama, comedy, and information, clearly meant to recruit more volunteers for GOC and to uphold the morale and training of existing volunteers.
But wait, you say ... we don't need all those live eyes now, because we have radar and other electronic warning systems.
Yes, and those systems failed completely on 9/11. NORAD did nothing, FAA did less than nothing. If we had a well-organized set of eyes aimed at mosques and at Mohammedans, we might be able to prevent the next attack.
Of course there's no real point in proposing any of this. Sultan Bush is not on our side. ¶ 7:06 AM
The Ground Observer Corps, also called the Air Warning Service, kept 150,000 unpaid volunteers busy watching for Jap planes near the coasts.
A new addition to the Old-time Radio section at Archive.org is a full season of Eyes Aloft, produced in Hollywood for the benefit of the Ground Observer Corps in the West. The programs were high quality mixtures of drama, comedy, and information, clearly meant to recruit more volunteers for GOC and to uphold the morale and training of existing volunteers.
But wait, you say ... we don't need all those live eyes now, because we have radar and other electronic warning systems.
Yes, and those systems failed completely on 9/11. NORAD did nothing, FAA did less than nothing. If we had a well-organized set of eyes aimed at mosques and at Mohammedans, we might be able to prevent the next attack.
Of course there's no real point in proposing any of this. Sultan Bush is not on our side. ¶ 7:06 AM
