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Webmaster's note: The Civil Defense and Ground Observer Corps were involved in UFO observations during the 1950s. Jan's note below cites one particularly interesting case from Enfield CT.
CIVIL DEFENSE / GROUND OBSERVER CORPS by Jan Aldrich, coordinator, Project 1947
It appears that along with the Ground Observer Corps, the state Civil Defense organizations were used to gather UFO information in the early days.
The Ground Observer Corps was original under the Civil Defense organization and was later the GOC moved to the Air Defense Command. The two remained closely connected.
The GOC lasted from about 1951-1957 (one year later in Canada.) The GOC manned a serious of visual observation posts with volunteers who sometimes recieved little or no training. Their mission was to supplement the radar coverage of the air defense system.
Each observation post was tied in telephonical to a filter center which had communication with local air defesne radar stations and fighter interceptors squadrons. Many times interceptors were launched on the mere say so of these untrained observers. Many times they were launched to find that the observer had seen Venus.
The local Civil Defense was tied into the GOC net and interacted and supplemented the GOC and ADC effort. In 1952 the Civil Defense organizations seemed to take on the roll of supplementary ufo investigators.
At Enfield, Connecticut on 6 September 1952 at 10:10 p. m. the guards and prison work detail at the Osborn Prison Farm saw an oblong silvery object. Their attention was drawn to it by an unusual sound in the sky unlike a jet or airplane. The object appeared to drift in a zigzag course. It dropped for a considerable distance, stopped, and then there was a loud report and the object quickly shot upwards at a high rate of speed.[footnote 1]
The local Civil Defense officials went out to the prison farm, took statements, and submitted their report to the Filter Center in New Haven. Civil Defense personnel were previously credited with facilitating the reports of ufos to the New Haven Filter Center which had so many unusual ufo reports at the time that a special investigation team was dispatched check on the sighting. (One more thing, the Osborn Prison Farm report is not in the Project Blue Book files.)
In North Carolina, in August 1952, the State Civil Defense director, E. Z. Jones told the local press that he had been asked by Army Intelligence to collect ufo reports. (The military support organization for the CD in North Carolina was the Army.) In a few days the regional civil defense directors echoed his request in their local newspapers. About a week later E. Z. Jones said he had received some surprising reports including a near landing of a ufo with figures seen moving around inside from September 1951!
When I visited the state capitol I checked the North Carolina State Archives. Most of the material on Civil Defense was from the public relations section. Other files were not available at the archives. I talked with the son of the regional director in Greensboro for 1952. He remembered his father as civil defense director but did not remember him talking about ufo reports.
In Wilimington, Delaware in early 1954 the local GOC officials revealed to the press that they had had over 100 ufo reports. Some reports included at huge cigar object and some reports were confirmed by radar. One researcher went to the Delaware State Archives to look for possible record in the CD files, but had no luck. There were no records there for the CD.
In Ohio in 1957 the civil defense investigated the Ogden Moore case.
In 1967 the Washington state CD investigated the mysterious beebs heard by numerous people. The beebs were first thought to be ufo related, but were later found to be owls.
When the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron was forming up, it sign letters of agreement with the CD organizations in the lower 48 states to cooperate on items of mutual interest.
A police officer in Georgia looking into the ufo situation there found that the CD investigated reports well into the 1970s. Asked what they did with them at the time (1973) by a news reporter, they said there was no one to send them to, so they simple recorded them.
The CDs were state agencies. The records should be somewhere in the state. The CD was organized to include an operations and intelligence section (the intel sections function was mainly to plot possible fallout from a nuclear attack.) In Connecticut I found the records for the 1950s were in storage and not at the archives and not readily available for inspection. They were still under the control of the Emergency Management office. I suspect the same is true in Delaware and North Carolina and elsewhere.
Here is a lead that can be checked in each state. No doubt the records, if they still exist, will not be readily available. It will probably take some digging. Remember this also, ufos were a very, very, small part of the whole CD operation. I wouldn't expect a separate ufo file. Material would probably been within correspondence or operations files.
Hynek during the 1950s tried to get the GOC filter centers and amateur astronomical societies to send him ufo reports directly. This was only slightly sucessful.
1. "Walter Borys, 36 of East Street, Suffield, said that at 10:10 AM today he heard a strange sound in the northern part of the sky... another guard [and the prison work detail]... also saw and heard the object.... The silvery oblong object appeared no larger than a dinner plate. The motor sound was unlike that of a jet or any other airplane. The sound stopped and the object appeared to be drifting towartd the earth in a zig-zag course (ed: the classic 'falling leaf' manuver). As it descended, it assumed a 'fluffy appearance'... After it had dropped a considerable distance the object stopped. There was a loud report and with a puff of smoke, it shot upwards at a right angle at incredible speed. It was out of sight within seconds... all 15 stories were consistent and agreed except for minor details."
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