Word: civilian
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...problem. That the Army does not expect North Carolina or any other State to be presently bombed is beside the Army's point. For when & if it goes to "defensive war"-whether at home or on foreign soil-it still must protect itself, its occupied areas and the civilian lives and properties thereon...
...area worth bombing there are bound to be plenty of civilians. The Army proposed to use civilian eyes & ears. An Army reservation surrounded by civilians, and big enough for a variety of targets and ground defenses, was the Field Artillery's Fort Bragg, 100 miles inland from the North Carolina coast. Two months ago, Brig. General Fulton Quintus Caius Gardner went to work to sharpen civilian eyes, prick civilian ears in 39 counties and 20,758 square miles around Fort Bragg. In each of 307 eight-mile squares, the cooperating American Legion found farmers, storekeepers, housewives, amateur radiomen, foresters...
...miles southward from Langley Field, Va., to Fort Bragg. Ordered to fly at 4,000 feet the first night, to accustom the observers, bombers later went up to 18,000, 20,000 and 24,000 feet heights now practicable thanks to a new, secret bomb sight. Without fail, civilian groundlings heard or saw, got warnings to Fort Bragg within three minutes. On a headquarters defense map, lighted in red and green, winking bulbs "tracked" the course of the bombers with astounding accuracy. Indeed, Army airmen were shaken by the knowledge that even at great heights, their craft were seen...
...fact, Army airmen need not have been greatly distressed. The civilian net worked perfectly in daytime, when bombers would not normally attack. It also worked well at night. But unsolved was a great problem of night-time defense. Unless pursuit pilots and antiaircraft gunners can see their targets, bombers are safe...
Furthermore, civilian netting in rural and small-town North Carolina did not answer the defense questions of Manhattan, Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Francisco, around which lie vast patchworks of smaller cities, replete with well nigh indispensable lights, ground noises to dull groundling ears, an appalling number of dispersed targets for enemy hunters. Army men neatly turned this fact to their publicity uses. In North Carolina was concentrated all the modern antiaircraft equipment east of the Rocky Mountains. Twenty-four guns, in six batteries, were barely enough to defend the 1½-square mile objective marked off at Fort Bragg...