Civil Air history

In my youth, I had a bit of fun in Civil Air Patrol.  I don't think its what some other kids would think of as fun, considering I had to march in the snow and rain, conduct parade drills, configure those stupid flimsy ELT receivers, and adhere to the most inane flight restrictions, and memorizing the Contrails booklet (I need to find out what happened to my copy). 

The fun bits made it all worth it, though.  Like being called for an actual search and rescue mission, being ferried around by the Military Airlift Command, messing with Air Force enlisted personnel, fly propjobs and gliders for free, and fiddling with M109 Paladins, M249s, and Mk19s (even though we really weren't supposed to do those last few). 

As fun and functional as they are, I think I really joined up at the wrong time. They had a much more colorful history during their early years.

I wish our plane and gear looked this hardcore.

Look how much those uniforms rocked!  Now we just have crappy hand me downs from the ANG.  I would have loved to be serving in those days and come home at the end of the day knowing I was the first civilian on my block with a confirmed kill.  That, and you don't have anyone who looks as good as this in the wings anymore (at least I didn't):

Seriously?!  Where the hell were these aviatrixes when I was in CAP?

Anyways, they're a good organization, but I think they suffer from a lack of awareness, so for educational purposes, I'll just link to a fantastic article on the history of CAP I saw on a cool new website I came across.  Now go and enjoy reading about some little-known WWII history that made a very big impact.