What is the Civil Air Patrol?

The Civil Air Patrol is a civilian group of pilots and plane enthusiasts who do a lot of things, namely help out in search and rescue missions. But their history is a bit more colorful. Listen in today!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:23):
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October YEP. Head on over s y s K live
dot com has everything you need and we will see
you guys live in person. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

(00:50):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and we're
flying high for this for this episode of Stuff you
Should Know. Civil Air Patrol, I've got a different version
of it. Okay, well, air PU, civil air Patrol, Civil

(01:12):
air about air Patrol. Oh, do you remember when I
used to put that in your head? Yeah? It's like
the good old days when used to earworm me. I
think that's the greatest er worm of all. It's pretty good.
It's in my head now, good hair. I like that Patrol.

(01:34):
So we're talking about the Civil Air Patrol and we're
gonna just say what it is right out of the gate. Okay,
go ahead. Now, let's talk first about what I ate
for breakfast? Okay, you have Did you have bacon? No?
I didn't eat breakfast. Civil Air Patrol is a nonprofit
group that's a civilian group of um, well of playing enthusiasts,

(01:59):
but the much more than that they are. They have
sort of a quasi military hierarchy. They are under the
control of the U. S. Air Force, and what they
do a lot these days is things like search and rescue.
We talked a little bit about them in in our
Star episodes. Um but they have a very cool, kind
of rich and colorful, colorful history. And I'm trying to

(02:22):
get John Roderick of the indie rock band The Long
Winters my pal and from the podcast. While he does
a lot of podcasts, which one should we say, friendly
Fire sure his war movie podcast, he was a member
of the Civil Air Patrol and I texted him and said,
you know, I'd love to get a quote from you

(02:43):
on your experience, and he says, heck, yeah, uh and
then he never said anything. So if it comes in,
we'll read it. If not, just know that John was
a teenage member of the Civil Air Patrol, which you
still can be. Yeah, you definitely still can be. It's
still around. There's there's From what I saw, it's something
like sixty strong today. No, not bad at all. Um.

(03:05):
And I get the impression it's a little bit like
the Eagle Scouts of the Air for like under eighteen people. Yeah,
the Cadet program. It sounded very much like sort of
boy Scouts meets r OTC. Yeah, because there's a lot
of emphasis on like public service and being like an
upstanding person and um, you know just just um not

(03:27):
stealing things. I think there's a big emphasis on that. Yeah.
But also you get the feeling there's a little bit
of like you want to go on the Air Force,
right son? Right, Well, I think that is kind of
either if it's not a stated part of it, um.
If it's um, it's still like a definite function of
the Civil Air Patrols, it's it feeds into the actual

(03:49):
Air Force cadet program, and you can actually benefit from
being in the Civil Air Patrol if you do plan
to go into the Air Force. Apparently you can enter
the Air Force at a higher pay grade if you
have worked up to a certain rank in the civil
Air Patrols. So if you're interested in being a good citizen,
if you like to fly, if you want to be
in the Air Force, um, you could do a lot

(04:13):
worse than joining the Civil Air Patrol. I'll tell you that.
If you want to be a part of what they
say is about a hundred saves a year out in
the wilderness, or if you just want to be a
part of an organization that had a very cool origin,
which we'll talk about right now. Okay, let's early on
in aviation history and like the nineteen twenties and thirties,

(04:36):
still in its infancy, but it was big enough to
where people could like own a plane and they could
buy their own personal plane and get their pilots license. Yeah,
which is that's really fast if you think about I mean,
Brothers flew at Kittie Hawk in Yeah, I mean a
couple of decades later, people are like, I want to
own a plane and fly it. That's how everybody talk

(04:57):
that mid Atlantic accent. That's right, hey, Chuck. By the way,
I want to shout out what I have come to
think is one of the top three facts of stuff
you should know of all time, that the Brits originally
sounded like Americans and that the Brits lost their American
accent rather than the other way around. Is that true? Yeah?

(05:19):
Don't you remember in our accent when podcast? When did
they sound like Americans? It started up to about the
twenties or thirties, and then the BBC came along on
the radio and they made a conscious decision to sound
like Oxford types who had basically affected an accent um
in order to separate themselves and sound classier. So you're saying,

(05:42):
with the BBC adopted, if there was audio recording from
nineteen then a guy from central London would sound like
me right now, basically. Yeah, So they're getting it wrong
in all those movies too, then yes, but these are
also the same movies where like Nazis sound like British
people on the BBC. So it's all kinds of messed up,

(06:04):
all right. I love that you just bring out a
random effect from an old show is the fact of
stuff you should know all time history. But let's go
back in time. Let's hop in the way back machine
and go back to the Great War, the Second World War,

(06:25):
when there were people in this country that love their
flying civilians, and they saw the beginning of the war
in the late nineteen thirties when europe European fascist basically
said nine no more civilian flying, it's all shut down.
And so the aviators over here, civilian aviators were like, WHOA,

(06:47):
that's not cool. We like flying our planes. Maybe we
should get organized and see if we can actually add
value to the military as civilians. Because that was back
when all Americans wanted to pitch in a little bit
to help out the war effort. Right. There was um
one guy in particular, guy named gil Rob Wilson, but

(07:09):
he was not the only one. There's another dude named
Milton Knight, and both are credited with founding basically civilian
Air Force auxiliary programs to say, hey, military, we're not military.
It's cool, but there's other stuff we can do to
help you guys out. And let's also not forget that

(07:29):
if we can use our collective clout to popularize flying
and aviation and just get more Americans interested in it
and showing that that, hey, you can actually learn to fly,
come hang out with us and will show you how.
We'll we'll be generating a pool of pre trained uh

(07:50):
UM pilots who can transfer over to the military if
the US ends up going into World War two. Yeah.
Almost like a reserve unit, even though it is not that. No,
it's an auxiliary union, which means it it's it's an auxiliary.
It's on the side. It's in addition to it's not
it's not like a reserve unit that can be called
up to active duty military like the reserves. It's a

(08:11):
civilian volunteer force. Right. So gil Rob Wilson was working
on this and kind of concurrently there were some some
state based aviation groups for civilian civil uh civil defense
units that were kind of cropping up here and there
on the East coast uh and so he kind of

(08:32):
saw the writing on the wall and wanted to make
things official. So he developed a plan for the Civil
Air Patrol, got support very importantly, got support from a
gentleman named Fiorello LaGuardia. You don't put any mustard on LaGuardia.
It's just a cruddy airport. Okay. Actually, like LaGuardia. It's

(08:55):
six coming along, but it's still kind of creutzy. It's fine,
not None of the New York airports are great. Have
you have you ever seen the uh the pictures of
the abandoned t W A terminal at LaGuardia from like
the jet age of the sixties. It's amazing. It's like
a time capsule, frozen in time. And I think they
converted it into a hotel recently. But like goes, somebody

(09:18):
did a really good photo spread, like back in two dozen,
twelve or whatever. Um, just look up t W A terminal.
Maybe it's JFK and not Laguire. I think it is JFK. Um.
Either way, it's still worth checking out. I'll check it out. Okay.
So LaGuardia. He was a director of the Office of
Civilian Defense at the time. Uh he. Of course the

(09:39):
airport was named after him. He was mayor of New
York City at one point. He was an aviator in
World War One, so it was really a big deal
to get him on board. UM. And they designed their
little logo, which is a blue circle with a propeller,
three propellers in a white triangle, and initially they were
handled by is. This was pre Air Force, before the

(10:02):
Air Force was officially established after World War Two. It
was part of the U. S. Army Air Corps What
was the U. S. Army Air Corps, which I think
we made the distinction in the Tuskegee Airman. So everyone
kind of gets on board and LaGuardia signs the Civil
Air Corps as it was known, originally into existence on
December one, ninety one. And as you will note that date, Uh,

(10:26):
it was very relevant because just six days later is
when the attack on Pearl Harbor happened, and all of
a sudden, we could use this help. Yeah, and I
mean remember this is like a surprise attack by the
Japanese on Pearl Harbor. So it was pretty prescient of
Gil Rob Wilson and Fiorello LaGuardia to to get this
thing organized and together, because yeah, within a week they

(10:49):
were like, okay, we probably can use you guys. The
problem is that the Air Corps initially was like, what
are we gonna do with these like these civilians? You know,
super gun? How civilians do I imagine? Right? Exactly which
which is like even worse to have to deal with
in like just regular old civilians who don't know what
they're doing. Um. In some cases it turned out that

(11:12):
it was actually the Civil Air Patrol was really helpful,
um because one of the really overlooked things about World
War Two is that German U boats, you know, like
a variation of a submarine, but they just couldn't stay
under quite as long. They wreaked absolute havoc on um

(11:34):
the United States coasts um during World War Two. Basically
within a month of Pearl Harbor, four to six weeks
after Pearl Harbor, the first US freight or the city
of Atlanta was sunk by a U boat off the
coast of North Carolina. And that was the first of
I think three hundred and nineties seven ships that were

(11:58):
either um sunk damaged by U boats in six months
off the coast of America. Yeah. So at this point,
the Civil Air Patrol has one wing is what they
called it, per state. Uh. I have no idea how
many states there were. I think it was forty eight,
just kidding, uh. And each one of those wings was
divided into squadrons and they were operating out of civilian

(12:20):
airports mostly, but then in nineteen forty two they were,
um they started opening up some dedicated civil air patrol
bases in certain states around the country. So all of
a sudden, there are uh in ninety people enrolled in
the civil Air Patrol, and these German U boats are
doing damage off the coast, and all of a sudden

(12:43):
they were like, well, listen, we weren't sure quite what
to do with you guys. You've been helping us out.
You've been delivering some things and even some personnel at
times and munitions, but we think, what, you know, we
don't have the resources in our what will soon be
called the Air Force to just patrol all up and
down the East coast all the time. So that's where
you're going to really uh be valuable to us. And

(13:05):
that was really the first big, kind of important use
of the civil air Patrol in World War Two. Yeah,
and it was effective too because with U boats, part
of the doctrine of um of U boat warfare sub
Commander Nous was that if you saw a plane overhead,
you dove um to get away from that plane because

(13:28):
they were very vulnerable from an aerial attack. So um,
just seeing a civil air patrol plane overhead meant that
the sub had to break off from pursuit of whatever tanker, freighter,
troop transport it was about to sink, um and and
dive in and evade that plane, just even an unarmed

(13:49):
civil air patrol plane because they didn't know they're unarmed
at the time. I don't think exactly exactly. Um, So
this actually started working out pretty well. But there was
one incident in particular off the coast of right at
Cape Canaveral. From what I understand, a U boat got
caught on a sandbar and was just laying there exposed,

(14:09):
trying to get free for about thirty minutes, and a
civil air patrol plane was circling it had spotted it
had called in for reinforcements I think, for an aerial
strike from the Air Corps UM for the sitting duck
of a U boat, and before the air strike could
get there to blow the U boat up, it got
itself free and made its escape got away. Um. And

(14:31):
this was enough. It was a frustrating enough if the
pilot was just like, I want a bomb so bad. Well,
in very short order, the air UM, the Air Corps
commander hap what was his name, Henry hap Arnold. Hap
Arnold said give him those bombs, and the Civil Air Patrol,
not in any way a military organization, a civilian auxiliary

(14:55):
group was given depth charges and bombs to drop on
U boats from that point none for the rest of
World War two. Yeah, so here's the deal with that.
They they had to bomb from very very high up. Um.
They had to use improvised bomb sites because you know this,
they didn't just have this stuff lying around, and they

(15:15):
needed this stuff for the real I was about to say,
the real planes for the military. So they weren't like,
here's the best bomb sites we have. So there's really
no like um. I think the Civil Air Patrol probably
likes to claim that they actually bombed you boats, but
there aren't any official on record bombings that were carried

(15:36):
out by Civil Air Patrol that like sank you boats
at you talked to. Germany was like that never happened,
didn't affect us. Civil Air Patrol was like, no, it's
more like yah, right. So it is in dispute. In particular,
one sub that some uh Civil Air Patrol guys dropped

(15:57):
depth charges over in New Jersey and they said a
geyser of oil and water erupted from the water, which
would indicate that they had sunk this this U boat.
But like you're saying, the Germans don't have any record
of anything like that, so they probably they probably didn't
at the very least, though they did harass the German

(16:17):
U boats. And whether it was directly because of civil
Air patrol UM patrols over the coastline or not. By July,
about six months after the first attack, German U boats
like pulled off of American coastal waters and stopped attacking.
So it probably wasn't entirely coincidence. It probably wasn't entirely

(16:40):
because of the civil air patrol, but they almost certainly
played a prominent role in in Germany's discontinuation of their
sub attacks in American waters. Yeah, so here's what we'll do.
We'll do a stat cliffhanger. Okay, we'll take a little
break and come back with a little bit of statistical
evidence to support your claims are right for this? All right,

(17:28):
So you said they made a difference, and the numbers
kind of back it up. First of all, they were
only supposed to do this for ninety days, while they
kind of got the real plan together for the military.
They ended up doing this coastal patrol for eighteen months,
so that alone kind of says it was working, or
at the very least, they weren't quick enough to get
there the real plan going. But here's the stats. A

(17:51):
hundred and seventy three subs spotted and ostensibly brady out
in You know, they weren't just spotted and then forgotten
about right there, Like I don't feel like calling it
in this time. Eighty two depth charge bomb attacks against
those subs impressive, pretty impressive. And again, let's say they're
not actually bombing them out of the water. It's got

(18:12):
to be disconcerting to have civilians up there dropping bombs
on you. Sure, it's like the North Avenue irregulars put
in the air. Uh they you know, there were mines
out there. They found seventeen floating mines and rescued three
hundred and sixty three people and ships. Uh that had
trouble reported, which I don't think we mentioned. Like America

(18:33):
likes to think that, like, oh well, yeah, the fighting
didn't happen over here in the United States. But if
you looked on the East coast, uh, like on the water.
Chances are you might have pulled a service person out
of the water from one of these bombings. Yeah, like
it happened. There were people in the water that needed rescue,
and the civil Air Patrol was there. I read an
account of a family that lived on the coast off

(18:56):
of Hatteras. Apparently Cape Hatteras the waters off had were
called torpedo junction. This happened so frequently. Um, but they
like they're the windows would rattle in your house when
uh a torpedo struck like a tanker something, you know,
eight miles away off the coast like it was. You
just do not get raised with that in history. It's

(19:18):
just not talked about. But it was a pretty big
for six months. It was a big problem for the
United States. Yeah, and this was, um. There was a
lot of bravery involved because these little planes. They were stretching,
these pilots and their experience and these planes and their
mechanical capabilities to the utmost degree to fly these things

(19:39):
that far off shore to do these patrols. And they
still did it. Um. They flew five hundred about five
hundred thousand hours during the war combined. And they were
not getting rich doing it. Uh. They were reimbursed for fuel,
but they were paid eight dollars a day, which even
back then was not a lot of money. Now I
calculate it's about a hundred dollars today. It's not bad. Actually, yeah,

(20:02):
come nothing of it if you're not doing anything else
but take it dropping bombs on Nazis, that's kind of
fun and getting a bucks for it, right. Uh. And
in the end, thirty pilots of the civil and the
Civil Air Patrol died flying in accidents. Um. And that's
in addition to the ones in the Coastal Patrol. That's
just total. I think there were twenty six on the

(20:24):
actual coastal Patrol that died. I thought it was like
sixty five. This is twenty six deaths and they lost
ninety planes. Got so um like this was a really
big deal. I mean like it was. It was saying
like you you and you you know you, you the
guy who owns the TV rishpair shop, and um, you
the guy who owns the barbershop next door getting these

(20:45):
planes and start dropping bombs on these U boats. That
was a big deal to to do to civilians and um.
In two thousand and fourteen, Obama posthumously in a lot
of cases awarded the UM the Medal of Honor, the
highest citizen honor. UH that anybody in the US can
get to. Everyone who was in the Civil Air Patrol

(21:08):
during World War Two, all two thousand people. And you
know what fun fact that you're gonna love. That barber
dropped his scissors and ran out of the barbershop to
go get in his plane halfway through a haircut. And
that's how the mullet was born. Nice was it? Floyd
was Griffith was the first one with the mullet. And
I bet you didn't know that the mullet was born

(21:29):
in the midnight. I suspected as much business in the
Front war in the rear right exactly. Man William was
the first mullet created. Do you know, I remember, very
very distinctly the first time I heard that term. I
was on set of a TV commercial. Um And this

(21:50):
was many, many years after the mullet. But when I
was in high school, it wasn't called the mullet. It
was just sort of kind of the cool hairstyle for
a little while, called the burnout. But I remember when
I heard them the mullet, I was on set and
one of my friends said, I said, who is this
guy who's Lee? And he said he. I don't know

(22:10):
why this stuck with me. He said, he is that
wedge of grossness over there with the mullet head. I
can see this sticking with you. It's pretty good. Yeah,
Lea's who he is. Poorly. What else did the Civil
Air Patrol do? Though? They did some other weird things. Yeah,
the the thing during World War Two that they're definitely
remembered for was the UM the bombing sorties and spotting

(22:34):
U boats, but they did plenty of other stuff. Basically, UM.
They did anything the Air Corps needed of them, which
is things like we need to get this commander from
you know St. Louis to uh Louisiana, can you give
him a ride St. Louis de baton Rouge. They did
that like pretty much constantly. They ferried UM supplies around,

(22:57):
they ferried people around. That was a huge part of
the war for here at home by the c a P.
Here's a cool thing that they did that also sounds frightening.
They would tow what's called target gliders for anti aircraft guns.
So you're a plane, you're in your little uh, single
engine plane, your civilian you were pulling behind you a

(23:19):
glider that big guns on the ground are taking target
practice at. Yeah, hopefully with a really long toe line.
I wonder how long that could be though, I don't know,
but it almost seems mean spirited that assignment. Who did
that fall to? You know, the guy who drove the
uh the driving range of golf ball pick up Volkswagen. Oh,

(23:42):
they yeah, he'd be prepared for that kind That's exactly
who did it. I'll bet you're right. So that was
a huge one. Um. Apparently an equal amount to the
danger of being shot out of the sky accidentally. Um
in that assignment was also accidentally looking into the searchlights
that they used in these training exercises, because at least
one pilot was blinded by them and crashed from being

(24:05):
I guess disoriented afterwards. Here's one final mission. In Texas.
The Civil Air Patrol was charged with culling the wolf population.
So apparently it, you know, would reduce pressure on the
cattle herds that these wolves were killing, and they needed
this this beef to feed soldiers and citizens. So they said,

(24:27):
get up there in your planes and start shooting at wolves. Yeah,
and At first when I was reading that, I thought
they were saying they needed the wolf meat to feed
the troops. I was like, then I understood what it
was saying. Um, but yeah, they would shoot the wolves
with handguns out of their planes. That's right. I think
it's said wolves instead of wolves wolves. So so World

(24:51):
War two comes and goes, Civil Air Patrol proves its
metal and the Army Air Corps is dissolved and basedically
turned into the Air Force. Air Force came after World
World War two. Um, and it was from what I understand,
kind of a bit of like hot potato afterward to where, um,

(25:14):
no one really wanted the Civil Air Patrol right because
one of these a law that was basically passed HR
forty four, which is really significant to you if you're
in the Civil Air Patrol. It basically said, no, the
air the Civil Air Patrol isn't going anywhere. We're going
to establish its its existence under law, but we are

(25:35):
never ever going to arm them again. That's just not
gonna happen. Let's just not speak of this anymore. Let's
pretend it never happened. But no one's ever gonna drop
a bomb again with the Civil Air Patrol and so
it doesn't seem like they were particularly sought after, but
they ended up falling under the um the command of
the Air Force after it was established, and bounced around

(25:57):
a little way a few places within the Air Force
and then finally landed in the Air Combat Division. Yeah.
And you know, post war, they really really made their
name and continue to make their name with search and rescue. Uh,
if you're lost in the woods, or if they're natural
disasters or big weather events, um, then the Civil Air

(26:19):
Patrol is likely to be involved. There was a big
earthquake in Alaska, n where um, the the Alaskan Civil
Air Patrol and this was where Roderick was in the
Civil Air Patrol in Alaska. Yeah, that's where he's from.
But this was sixty four, so he would have been
just a little kid then, um, if not even alive

(26:41):
yet actually, so I don't think he was in that one.
He may have just been a glean. But their Civil
Air patrols, hangar and planes were all destroyed. So volunteers,
you know, got it together, got eleven private planes started
flying supplies in there, and um, these were good you know,
these are good pilots and these aircraft did things that

(27:02):
military aircraft couldn't do a lot of times. Well that's
where that's where they're The role of the civil air
patrol and search and rescue really kind of came became obvious,
like almost out of the gate because they were doing
searching air rescues during World War Two as well. Um,
the just the fact that their planes weren't fighter jets

(27:24):
was a huge advantage for them in search and rescue
because you want to fly lower and you want to
fly slower when you're looking for somebody. So the fact
that you have these this group of you know, tens
of thousands of civilians who are either flying, flying instructors
learning to fly, have their own planes um partially funded

(27:46):
by by taxpayers for even more planes. UM, that's a
really great resource to be able to tap into. When
something happens in disaster strikes and you want to look
for people, you just say, hey, can you guys go
search for you know, these people, or go fly around
this floodplane see if there's anybody on um any rooftops
and then radio it in. That was a huge role

(28:07):
and probably the most prominent role that civil air patrol
still holds today is in search and rescue. Yeah, and
they didn't. You know, they don't just fly around and
radio it down all. They certainly do that. They are
very active and in all manner and all parts of
the search. Um they are you know, many of them
cross train and like horseback riding and cross country skiing,

(28:27):
across fit across fit of course. Uh so they you know,
they can kind of they can kind of do it all. Um.
Now they have these what's called cell phone forensic teams
and they can analyze cell phone tower pings and topo
maps and it's it's become a much more sophisticated, um
sort of search and rescue, largely because of the Civil

(28:50):
Air Patrol. Right, But ironically, some of the stuff that
some of the talents and expertise they've developed in this
search and rescue area, like have nothing to do with planes,
and so they might assist in a search and rescue
without ever taking the air in some cases. But they
still had their cool uniform, sure, and they still march
when they're told to. Should we take a break? Sure,

(29:10):
all right, We're gonna take another break and talk about
a little bit more about the evolution of the c
a P. So, like I said, Chuck. They were shuffled

(29:43):
around after World War Two and then um, they're still
under and and you know, kind of linked to the
Air Force. Um, but they are definitely civilian, like all civilian. Um,
you can't get into the Air Force. And they do
have this kind of quasi military structure. They have ranks
and things like that, but the ranks that they have

(30:05):
are strictly limited to the civil Air Patrol. Like if
you become I think the highest you can become in
the civil Air Patrol is a major general, that would
not translate over to the Air Force. Like you wouldn't
be able to move to the Air Force and be
like I'm a major general. They'd be like, let's uh,
let's reset things show right. Um. But like I said,

(30:27):
if you start to work your way up in the
civil Air Patrol, you can transfer over to the Air
Force with some credit. Like it's not like it's just
a complete waste of time if you want to go
into the Air Force. But um, and I think five
they got their first non military commander, first civilian commander,
and that really kind of set the tone from what

(30:48):
I understand for this kind of division between the military
Air Force and the civilian volunteer civil air Patrol. They
that really kind of forever divided that line saying you
got can have your ranks and your you guys march
all you want and call each other's sir and salute,
but your civilian and an auxiliary. Yeah. And like you said,

(31:09):
they're under the Air Force still and ironically, um, the
specific division of the Air Force there under the direction
of now is the Air Combat Command, even though they
cannot be used in combat. Uh, you're not gonna get
paid even eight dollars a day anymore. It is full
volunteer at this point. Um. In fact, you have to
pay dues, membership dues every year, and you have to

(31:30):
pay for your own uniform. Uh. And if you really
want to go at large, you can just buy fake
epaulets and medals. And you really, I mean, I'm sure
you can. You probably get made fun of her, yell
at whatever. It sounds like I'm making fun of civil
Air Patrollers, and I'm certainly not, because well, they definitely
are great, and the idea and the whole purposes is

(31:52):
pretty great. But I definitely from reading about, like you know,
people who had been in it and some of their
when they were asked online like what did you what
was your experience? I get the impression that there is
a uh an element of blow hardness among some people
in the Civil Air Patrol. Whereas some are there to
like learn to fly and for the love of flying
and or because they do want to go into the

(32:12):
Air Force, there are people there who might abuse their
rank or status in the Civil Air Patrol that you schmucks.
There are schmucks there for from what I understand here
there although it doesn't seem to be systemat sucks everywhere.
Um So, like I said at the beginning, there are
a nonprofit and there are a few people to get
paid a salary. Obviously, when you get to the administration,

(32:35):
the national level, you're gonna have to pay some people
to run this thing. Um. The Air Force does pay
expenses if they are asked to performed mission so well.
Plus also, if you're on a mission and something happens
to you, you are at that moment covered by the
military's life insurance, so your family is well cared for
after that. Yeah, it's a very good point. Actually, Um,

(32:57):
the member dues do pay for some planes, for some equipment,
some fuel, hangar, space, maintenance, stuff like that. Right now,
there are about five hundred and thirty single engine planes
and the Civil Air Patrol in the United States. A
lot of these are those. Uh, And I'm getting more
and more into planes lately. The more we've talked about
these planes, You're getting so old, dude. I must be

(33:21):
because I looked at Assessina one seventy two and I
was like, I mean, does that seat how much does
that cost? Really? Like, wow, well, no, I can't afford
it buy a plane. That's That's what I'm saying. Like
having that thought, you've threshold, like there's you know, planes
are cool, Let's go to a museum to see a plane.
How much would it cost for me to buy this
plane and fly at myself. That's the transition, and the

(33:43):
transition to is the thoughts of like, you know, when
when Emily and I are retired and Ruby lives somewhere,
it sure would be nice to just hop in the
Cessna and fly out and see her. Sure that is
like the oldest of old man talk. But then I
saw there like two d dollars. I was like, okay,
maybe you're like, maybe I can buy one of them
houses with the fly up driveways. Like John Travolta. Yeah,

(34:06):
I mean, dude, he has his own passenger airliner. Yeah
it's crazy. Well he's also rather wealthy, that's true. Uh
So there are more than uh four thousand planes though
used in any given year. Um so, I guess that's
the official fleet that the Civil Air Patrol runs. Right,

(34:28):
But if you are a member of the Civil Air
Patrol and you have your own plane, they'll be like,
can you bring your plane along? We need to use
it for the search and rescue. Right. And they don't
just do sour stuff. They work, um also with the
Forestry Service and the d e A. They look out
for forest fires, they conducts land surveys. They started to
do more and more um flies over farms in Kentucky,

(34:52):
if you know what I'm saying, to see what they're growing. Yeah. Yeah,
they started in I think the Customs and Border Patrol
said hey, um, how would you guys like to look
for marijuana plants to prevent marijuana cigarettes from being smoked
by me? And yeah, they jumped on it. I read
an article this is this is so Civil Air Patrol

(35:14):
the idea of like getting to to prevent drugs from
hitting the streets. Um, they they I guess the whoever
was interviewed, I didn't catch you it was, but an
official at the Civil Air Patrol, like in the higher
up in the national organization probably said something like they
they helped get a billion dollars worth of drugs, which is,

(35:36):
of course, like the manufacturers suggests a retail product um
of drugs off of the street in two thousand and seventeen,
and that they were on track to hit about the
same number in two thousand and eighteen. That's it's a
lot of marijuana cigarettes. Yeah, I can't help I probably
shouldn't even just say this. I gotta hear it. We

(35:57):
can edit it out later. Who the standard ground guy
in Florida? Oh um, oh man, George Zimmerman. Yeah, some
of this sounds a little bit like that, like, Hey,
I'm not a copper in the military, but I'm gonna
play like I am. I want to bust drug dealers. Well,
that actually made me wonder do they do they patrol
the southern border? I think they looking for I couldn't

(36:18):
see anything that said they did. Well, it said they did.
They patrolled the southern border in World War Two looking
for seven tours entering that's that's what triggered out, Like,
well wait a minute, that plus you know busting you
know pot growers do they do? They look for UM
people crossing the border illegally, and I didn't see anything

(36:40):
about them being used for that that might use it
could be. Yeah, they don't report that. But it was
hilarious the the guy interviewed maybe the major general who
was talking about how they got a billion dollars they
helped with getting a billion dollars of drugs off the streets. UM.
They were saying, we don't talk about that very much.

(37:00):
We don't release press releases because we don't want UM
to basically step on the d e A S operations
or anything like that. But trust us, that's how much
we get off of the streets. It was pretty cute.
They also work in just general UM aerospace and flying
education and advocacy. They do lectures and seminars, They put

(37:24):
together training manuals online, just trying to advance aviation and
the knowledge and love of aviation and Chuck. I also
saw in another article some other stuff that they do
is just pretty interesting. UM that is much more tied
to the military. So you remember there under like the
Combat Division. Um, well, the Combat Division puts them to

(37:45):
pretty good use sometimes, like if you are flying a
drone under f A regulations, that drone has to be
escorted by human in a plane over um over regular airspace,
nonmilitary airs base and so to get out of the
United States, a drone usually has to fly over non
military airspace. And so one of the things that the

(38:08):
Civilian Air Patrol does is they escort drones, which means
that that's something that the military doesn't have to do.
And for just one base with the drone escorts they provided,
this commander figured that they saved the military something like
four grand a year by doing this. Grottis basically they
also survey military training routes, so they basically fly over

(38:30):
the routes that test pilots are going to fly to
make sure that somebody hasn't put up power lines since
the last time they used them. Um. They they simulate
flyers that have accidentally entered restricted airspace for intercept training,
which has got to be kind of neat um and
that they're they're actually learning to fly drones themselves now too,

(38:50):
which is probably a pretty in demand skill if you're
somebody going into the Air Force these days. I think
it's adorable that they saved the military food dollars a year.
But well that was just one base too. But yeah,
he even he had enough self awareness that he was
saying like, yeah, I think he called it budget dust,
but he said, you know, it's it's still counts budget dust.

(39:12):
I love that half a million bucks is budget dust. Uh.
Then they have their cadet program. We mentioned earlier about cadets.
This is if you are under the age of eighteen,
you can still be in their cadet program. Once you're
over eighteen. Um, you know, you don't have to do
this until you're twenty one, but you can at eighteen, uh,

(39:35):
turn into a what's called a senior, which I thought
it was interesting that a seer could be like nineteen, right,
I can actually I found out why because that seems
kind of weird, doesn't it. What that they're called seniors.
Well that so if you enter in your over eighteen,
you have to be a you're have to be considered
a senior. But if you enter the Civilian Air Patrol

(39:57):
before you're eighteen, you can wait to become a senior
till your twenty one. And the reason why is because
you can get hammered when you get that rank you
get right, you just keep putting it off. It's called
delayed gratification. UM. You can get your training to get
your pilots license through the Civilian Air Patrol for basically

(40:19):
like half price of what you would pay a flight school.
And it was it's such a great deal that flight
schools complained to the government and so this is unfair competition.
So there's a rule with the Civilian Air Patrol that
if you enter the Civilian Air Patrol over the age
of eighteen, you are automatically considered a senior and you
do not qualify for instruction to get your pilot's license.

(40:41):
If you start before then and you start getting your
pilots license, you can delay being considered a senior till
your twenty one, so you have an extra couple of
years to complete your training to get your pilots license
at half price. That's the reason why you can delay
being a senior until your twenty one. Sounds like quite
a deal. Yeah, it is half price. Everybody loves half price. Uh.

(41:04):
And you know, like we mentioned earlier, just to kind
of put a cap on it, the UM, the cadets.
It is a bit like boy Scouts meets r otc um.
They get to actually get in planes. Like if you know,
if you're a kid, if you've gotta be twelve years old,
but if you are interested in flying and getting your
license or going into the air force, um, you can
you can train, and you can uh get yourself up

(41:26):
in the ranking system through the years, and you can
get seat time and planes and get flying experience, learn
to fly drones. It's a big one. Yeah. So uh,
I think it's like a pretty cool program for kids
to get into. Yeah. And if drug dealers just make
you so mad you can't even see straight, it's another
thing you can do, that's right, get rid of that. Uh,

(41:48):
you got anything else? Got nothing else? John Roddey and
never responded, So I'm just gonna go with his one statement,
which was, I'm a proud veteran. This is al Air Patrol. Well,
thank for almost nothing, John Rodders. Great story. Uh. If
you want to know more about the Civil Air Patrol, well,
then go join the Civil Air Patrol. Uh. And since

(42:10):
I said that, everybody, it's time for listener, ma'am. This
is from a fellow Toledo in josh. Oh. Yes, hey guys,
I'm a Spanish teacher and a second language acquisition NERD.
In a recent episode, you guys mentioned that you're not
fluent in the second language until you dream in that language. Uh, chuck,
I remember I said I had heard that before. Um.

(42:31):
As romantic and poetic as this sounds, it's totally made up,
which is what I figured. UM. Also, later in the episode,
you mentioned that someone who learns the second language as
an adult will never reach the fluency of a native speaker.
This is true sort of. It depends on your definition
of fluency. Though. Speakers of English is the second language
who have been in an English speaking country for years
or even decades will still have an accent, make mistakes

(42:54):
in word order, or have trouble with the vocabulary. Uh.
In the end, I argue that fluency is overrated and
what we should focus on is proficiency. Being hyper focused
on becoming quote fluent end quote leads people to be
paralyzed when speaking, and they'll spend years studying a language
but never be confident in their abilities to ever use it. Uh.
Side note, even though this dream thing is a myth,

(43:15):
I totally still celebrate with my students when they come
in and tell me about having dreams in Spanish, even
if it's not true. Uh, it's still fun when kids
feel confident, and I'd lead them to believe it is true.
Looking forward to future podcast guys Lisa and Toledo, Ohio.
Hi Josh, Go Rockets, Hi Lisa, Go Rockets and go

(43:36):
mud Hens and go Falcons. What are the Rockets? Toledo
Rockets the University of Toledo. Okay, Yeah, because you know
Taleda is so well known for its space program. Yeah,
I don't know why they're called the Rockets. Now that
they think about it, I'm ashamed. Who knows. Well, Thanks
a lot, Lisa, And if you want to be cool
like Lisa or like me and say you're from Toledo,

(43:57):
whether you are or not, it's fine. We probably won't
check bonnet. You can get in touch with us myriad ways. Um.
You can go onto our website stuff you Should Know
dot com and check out our social links, or you
can send us an email to stuff podcast at i
heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

(44:18):
production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
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