Location: Airport Road in Manteo
County: Dare
Original Date Cast: 2011
President Franklin Roosevelt established the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD) in May 1941, selecting New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia as director. The organization was tasked with coordinating federal civilian defense and assisting with the formation of state and local defense councils. Shortly thereafter Governor J. Melville Broughton established the North Carolina Office of Civilian Defense.
When the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) under the OCD was launched in December, North Carolina already had developed a plan for a civil air guard and merged it with the federal guidelines. The North Carolina Wing (or division) of the CAP held its first meeting on December 30, 1941, in Raleigh with 60 aviators present. Service in the CAP was voluntary and did not carry draft deferment. The aviators received pay for their time and equipment use when performing official services such as patrol or courier duty.
Within three months the North Carolina Wing included over 500 members and about 150 aircraft. North Carolina’s notorious “Torpedo Junction” (German U-boats sank 78 vessels and damaged 18 others) caused CAP officials and Broughton to make arrangements necessary to establish a CAP base on the state’s coast.
Although Wilmington was the original target, the base was placed at the Skyco airfield on Roanoke Island between Manteo and Wanchese. Pilots began making patrols on August 10, 1942. The unit was authorized by the War Department “to patrol coastal shipping lanes for the purpose of protecting friendly shipping and of locating and reporting enemy submarines, warships, or suspicious craft and to take such action as their equipment permits in the destruction of enemy submarines.”
Late in 1942 Coastal Patrol Base 16 moved from Skyco to an airport, built by the Works Progress Administration, north of Manteo. The base was commissioned as U. S. Naval Auxiliary Air Station Manteo in March 1943 and the CAP shared the base with Naval Fighting Squadron 17 (VF-17). Aircraft from the base patrolled from Norfolk to Ocracoke Inlet.
The Navy and Coast Guard also used CAP aircraft to escort convoys along the coast, to survey and chart wrecks that might pose risks to navigation, and to conduct search and rescue missions. Due to the important role of the CAP, a second coastal patrol base was established in Beaufort in 1943. Although critically underfunded by the government, North Carolina’s two coastal patrol bases provided vital support for military operations.
While North Carolina’s Civil Air Patrol bases were in operation, only two vessels were torpedoed off the coast. The civilian airmen assisted military pilots in effectively blockading Torpedo Junction. Today the Civil Air Patrol continues to conduct search and rescue operations and provides disaster relief and emergency services.
References:
Homer Hickam, Torpedo Junction: U-Boat War Off America’s East Coast, 1942 (1996)
Frank A. Blazich Jr., “North Carolina’s Flying Volunteers: The Civil Air Patrol in World War II, 1941-1944,” North Carolina Historical Review (forthcoming)
L. E. Keefer, From Maine to Mexico: With America’s Private Pilots in the Fight Against Nazi U-Boats (1997)
Robert E. Neprud, Flying Minute Men: The Story of the Civil Air Patrol (1948)