aloft
New Member
Here's the thing. CAP's coastal patrol efforts in WWII go far beyond two sunk U-boats, and anyone who makes light of CAP's coastal patrol doesn't have an adequate understanding of how serious the situation was along the eastern seaboard in early 1942. In the first 8 months of that year, the German Navy was having a freaking turkey shoot off the eastern seaboard. With the US Navy distracted by the black eye received at Pearl Harbor just a month before, German U-boats sunk 602 American vessels, mostly troop and cargo transports destined for the European theater, deep-sixing over 3 million tons of war materiel. Both the US Navy and US Army were woefully underprepared to defend against the U-boat threat, which threatened to radically alter the shape of the war had it continued unabated. (For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_happy_time )
With virtually zero notice--CAP had been formed only 6-8 weeks earlier--the first coastal patrol base was stood up and planes were in the air to help stem the U-boat threat. Military attack aircraft were few and far between as most were needed elsewhere (so much for defense being the defense department's top priority--then as now), and they couldn't be everywhere all the time. CAP planes initially served only as lookouts for U-boats, calling in Navy attack aircraft to deal with the enemy as they were found--until one day, a U-boat grounded itself on a sand bar for over 2 hours, while a CAP plane orbited idly, waiting for a Navy attack aircraft that never came. After that, at no less than Hap Arnold's order, CAP aircraft were rigged to carry bombs and depth charges, and CAP aircrews subsequently attacked U-boats on 57 separate occasions--not just the two "sunk or seriously damaged" everyone hears about. They were a major player in the defense of the largest wartime sealift ever conducted.
After the war, German Naval commanders cited CAP's coastal patrol aircraft as the primary reason they abandoned their U-boat attacks along the eastern seaboard. So the big deal is not that CAP sunk two subs, it's that CAP essentially won a major battle in the war effort. As both Daffy and Hacker have said, many units have a plethora of campaign streamers hanging on their unit guidon or flag, but not all contributions by all those units are equal in terms of impact they had on the war. Few, if any, of the bomber or fighter groups in Europe can honestly say their efforts had the same impact on the war than the 509th Composite Group, whose atomic bombings effectively ended the war. And thus, though CAP's coastal patrol operations weren't all that dangerous, daring or dramatic as those taking place where the "real fighting" was going on, they had an enormous impact on the war in Europe.
So why is CAP still talking about this? For starters, it's the only time CAP ever had a combatant role, or likely ever will again. That's our wartime service, period. There is no subsequent Operation Bolo to talk about. It was a big deal, whether Daffy and Hacker choose to believe it or not, and is the reason that CAP is the official civilian auxiliary to the Air Force today, instead of another AOPA or EAA.
But like others have said, it's but one feather of many in CAP's cap; the organization has done plenty of other things since then, and those are the emphasis today, not its WWII operations.
I guess I really don't get why the AF dudes here are making a big deal of this. Actually...I do; everyone needs someone to feel superior to, and for the Air Force, it's CAP. But really, isn't that a tad pathetic? It's like an Olympic decathlete taking pride in the fact they're better at sports than those who compete in the Special Olympics.
I've been in CAP working for group III HQ in the Dallas area for quite a while and I don't remember this incident. Whats your source? How long ago? 
I'm a 1stLt in CAP and there's definitely too much bitching in this thread.:banghead: Who cares! CAP serves a purpose and there are those that represent CAP; it's roles and values; and there are those tool bags who do it for the power trip and make the rest of us and the organization look bad.
