The Ground Observer Corps (GOC) was a World War II civil defense program designed to protect the United States from air attack. A million and a half civilian observers at 14,000 coastal observation posts searched the skies for German and Japanese aircraft and reported their findings by calling the Air Force “filter center” in their region.

The program ended in 1944 but was started up again in 1950 during the Cold War. A number of electric co-ops around the country saw the GOC as a golden opportunity for public service. Co-op linemen were out in the field every day, they were accustomed to survey-type work, and they had two-way radios in their trucks.

Mark Stenson, general manager of Cherry-Todd Electric Cooperative in Valentine, Nebraska, proposed in an April 1956 article in RE Magazine that the roughly 1,000 co-ops across the country could add 5,000 mobile observation posts “with little effort and no inconvenience to regular operations.”

In the 1950s, more than 800,000 volunteers ages 7 to 86 signed up for shifts at 16,000 observation posts and 73 filter centers, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. Seeing a Soviet bomber “seems implausible [now], but this was a time when it seemed prudent to expect the worst,” wrote A&SFM contributor Bruce D. Callander.

It was also a time before there was widespread use of radar or satellite warning systems peering down from space. The all-volunteer GOC was a low-cost way to keep the nation safe. The volunteers were given drawings of aircraft, tracking charts and, sometimes, model airplanes to help them tell the difference between “us” and “them,” as well as an aircraft’s’ altitude and distance.

Stenson sent three photos to RE Magazine to illustrate his article. One shows an unnamed lineman halfway up a pole pointing to an aircraft in the distance, while another lineman, “Buzzy” Bechtold, observes it from the ground. Bechtold looks at a GOC chart with concentric circles radiating out from Cherry-Todd Electric’s headquarters in the second photo. In the third, he sits in the cab of a line truck talking on the radio.

“Communication on the two-way radio begins with the words, ‘Aircraft Flash,’” reads the caption. “Information relayed to the office is in a specific sequence starting with the number, type, altitude, location and direction of flight of the aircraft under observation.”

Stenson said Bechtold and other members of his staff, both inside and outside personnel, got two to three hours of training before the co- launched its GOC program. Every co-op vehicle, truck or car, was equipped with one of the GOC distance charts.

Sometimes an aircraft could be heard but not seen, which was the case with high-flying jets.

“The report is still made by the outside crews by merely indicating that an unknown aircraft is in their particular area,” Stenson wrote. “Total time requirement for an aircraft report normally does not exceed two minutes. This means that there is practically no interruption of outside operation or office routine. Just one report of a hostile aircraft in sufficient time to complete its interception would repay all time and money expended by participating organizations for many, many years.”

According to A&SFM, the need for volunteer sky watchers dropped off significantly in 1957 when the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was declared technically ready and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was established.

“By then, both the U.S. and the Soviets had ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] capable of delivering atomic warheads to their adversaries’ homelands,” Callander explained. “Volunteer sky watchers, trained to spot aircraft when there still was time to intercept them, would be of little use against such weapons.”

In January 1958, the Ground Observer Corps was reduced from a 24-hour active duty service to a reserve service. A year later it was gone.