Editorial Note: Led by our Editor Dr Mike Hankins, From Balloons to Drones produces a monthly podcast that provides an outlet for the presentation and evaluation of air power scholarship, the exploration of historical topics and ideas, and provides a way to reach out to both new scholars and the general public. You can find our Soundcloud channel here. You can also find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
During the Second World War, the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) conducted anti-submarine operations, including giving civilian volunteer pilots the authority to drop bombs on enemy targets. To tell us about the role CAP played in the war, we’re joined by Dr Frank A. Blazich, Curator of Modern Military History at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and author of “An Honorable Place in American Air Power”: Civil Air Patrol Coastal Patrol Operations, 1942–1943 from Air University Press. A review of “An Honorable Place can be found here.
Dr Frank A. Blazich, Jr. is a Curator of Modern Military History for the Division of Armed Forces History at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, he holds a doctorate in modern American history from The Ohio State University and specialises in the American military experience in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Following his doctoral studies, Blazich served as the historian at the U.S. Navy Seabee Museum in Port Hueneme, California before moving to Washington, DC to serve as a historian in the History and Archives Division of Naval History and Heritage Command. Additionally, he served as the national historian for the Civil Air Patrol from April 2013 to March 2018. In March 2018, he became director of the Colonel Louisa S. Morse Center for Civil Air Patrol History at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, Washington, DC. In addition to articles, book review and various blog posts, his first edited book, Bataan Survivor: A POW’s Account of Japanese Captivity in World War II, was published by the University of Missouri Press in February 2017.
Header Image: A variety of Civil Air Patrol-operated aircraft, including a Sikorsky S-39 in center frame, parked at Coastal Patrol Base 17 between July 1942 and August 1943. The base would eventually become Francis S. Gabreski Airport in New York State. (Source: Wikimedia)
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