November 04, 2007

Local Corps played part in Cold War

By O.C. Stonestreet

Soon after the end of the Second World War relations between the victorious Allies began to deteriorate. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, who had been prime minister of Great Britain during the the War, “an Iron Curtain had descended” across parts of Europe now controlled by the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin.

So began what was called “the Cold War,” which became a hot fight in places such as Korea and Vietnam, but never escalated into a full-blown World War III.

The Soviets also soon had the hydrogen and atomic bomb and missiles thanks to their captured German rocket scientists, had the means to deliver weapons of unimaginable destruction upon the United States and its NATO allies. 

Of course we, too, had atomic weapons and the means of their delivery to Warsaw Pact nations, thanks to work done in part by our captured German rocket scientists.

All this is background to the establishment of the Ground Observer Corps, part of the Civil Defense Program, under the direction of the U.S. Air Force, in Mooresville and Statesville in the 1950s. It is an interesting, if short, footnote to Iredell County history.

Ground Observation Corps members were all volunteers and in articles about the Corps it was stressed that just about anyone, men, women or teenagers, “who can see and hear reasonably well is eligible to belong.” Training seems to have been simple.

“The average person can qualify as an aircraft spotter,” said Mooresville’s Joe Carter,” after taking a training course of about one hour. After participating in one or two exercises, he should be qualified to man the post efficiently.”

In Statesville, A. J. Wilson was the post commander in 1955, when the post was dedicated. Other known members of the Statesville outfit were Ronald Burke, Larry Carpenter, David Gosnell, Richard Harrison, Ronald Lenderman, Mickey Munday and Teddy Newton. According to an article in a November 1957 Record & Landmark, the Statesville Post had 152 members, but only about 30 were consistently active.

The Statesville headquarters was located on Brevard Street, which may or may not have been the site from which the post made aircraft observations.

In Mooresville, a post had been organized in 1952 and was supported in part by the Mooresville Lions Club. Bill Branch was the post supervisor and Joe H. Carter was chief observer, according to an April 1954 article in the Mooresville Tribune.

Other known members of the Mooresville unit were Jimmy Alrutz, Michael Branch, Jim Brawley, Childs Calhoun, Don Johnston, Joe Knox, Phil McLaughlin, Jack Rector, Bill Spencer, Dr. George Wike and Norman Wilson.

Norman Wilson was born in 1939 and grew up in Mooresville. He remembered the blackouts practiced during World War II. He recently shared some of his memories of the G.O.C. in Mooresville.

“I got into it my sophomore year at Mooresville High. I think it was through my Scout troop at First Presbyterian Church. Our station was up on top of the old Lowrance Hospital at night. Some of the grown-ups might have some kind of formal training, but all I got was OJT: On the Job Training. A plane would go over and we’d listen and could tell if it was a jet or propeller airplane; almost all were props at that time, and you could maybe see its lights. I never observed during the day.

“We had some binoculars, a small book with photos and drawings of aircraft and a little chart we oriented with a compass and we’d say the plane was going southeast to northwest or something like that.
“I had some kind of little pin that I got for being in it, but I don’t know whatever happened to it. I was only in the Corps for about a year as it interfered with sports at high school my junior and senior years.”

The Mooresville post, like its sister unit in Statesville, needed more eyes and ears to function adequately. It had only about 20 qualified spotters, yet still participated in practice exercises with other posts in the area. The Statesville post seems to have been linked organizationally with Durham, while the Mooresville post was linked with the 4674th Ground Observation Squadron in Charlotte. 

Mooresville’s observation site was the roof of the old Lowrance Hospital—now the Iredell County Government Center South—which was a good location. This is the highest part of Mooresville, and in earlier times this part of the town was known as “Eastern Heights.”

During a surprise three-day exercise in July of 1954, 21 Mooresville spotters tracked “at least 65” aircraft. Basic information on the aircraft, such as the airplane’s configuration, approximate speed, altitude and heading was telephoned to Charlotte, the nearest “Filter Center.”

Theoretically, suspicious aircraft would be challenged by Air Force interceptors and“… appropriate measures ... taken to prevent their reaching their destination.”

An unidentified source in the Tribune article described what might happen as a result of such an aircraft being called in to the Charlotte center: “It is the Filter Center’s job to decide whether such aircraft are enemy or friendly. In all cases of doubt, fighter planes are dispatched to check on their identity. If they prove to be enemy aircraft, they will be forced to land or be shot from the sky.”

As far as is known, no red-starred Ilyushin or Tupolev bombers, suspicious or otherwise, made it to Iredell County, but the posts in Mooresville and Statesville would have known what to do had they made it this far.