Tower (click to enlarge)
Statue (click to enlarge)
Cold War Watchtower
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Tower (click to enlarge) |
Statue (click to enlarge) |
In the early 1950's the United States Air Force ran a civilian volunteer program called Operation Skywatch, in which the volunteer Ground Observation Corps manned Ground Observation Defense Posts 24 hours a day.
| ... radar warning systems had not yet been developed to effectively track low-flying aircraft. As a result, volunteer American citizens were asked to man a 24-hour sky watch at various locations. Suspicious air traffic was to be reported to the United States Air Force by telephone to alert major cities and military installations and prevent a sneak attack reminiscent of Pearl Harbor. [IS] |
According to a 1996 article in the Lafayette Journal and Courier:
| There was a lot of talk of a Soviet - North Korean link and Soviet planes sneaking over the North Pole with the intent of bombing electrical facilities in Tennesee. [LJC] |
The first post commissioned nationwide was just north of Lafayette, Indiana. The tower, restored in 1976 and with a memorial at its base, still stands.
 Statue and tower, looking west (click to enlarge) |
 Statue and tower, looking west (click to enlarge) |
In August 1952 a wooden watch tower was commissioned by the USAF in Cairo, Indiana, a small community of 19 people in northern Tippecanoe County, north of Lafayette. It was designated DL3-G, or Delta-Lima-Three Green, and was the first Ground Observation Defense Post commissioned nationwide. According to a 1996 article:
| Eight others were built in Tippecanoe County, 420 in Indiana, and 20,000 across America. [LJC] |
Other Tippecanoe County watch towers included Crane Station, Romney, West Point, and the roof of the Lafayette Bank and Trust building in Lafayette. [LJC 1996]
The tower was built behind the home of Larry O'Connor, a former USN Chief Petty Officer who then ran the grocery, the only store in Cairo. That store, at the interestion of Tippecanoe County roads 100 West and 850 North, is now his home. He had moved to Cairo in 1949, and was asked through the Indiana governor's office to organize a sky watch post.
 The center of Cairo, looking north (click to enlarge) |
 View east from the intersection (click to enlarge) |
The sky watch started in mid to late 1950 with volunteers standing in O'Connor's back yard only during weekends. They then used the back of the Cairo store with a dedicated telephone line linked to a regional USAF "filter center" in South Bend, Indiana.
The tower went up in 1952. It was built of four utility poles 30 feet tall, with a 12x12 foot platform on the top, holding a 7x7 foot cabin surrounded by a railed balcony. The tower was commissioned by the USAF on 16 August 1952 in a ceremony attended by about 500 people.
 The tower (click to enlarge) |
 The tower (click to enlarge) |
 The tower (click to enlarge) |
There were 90 to 120 volunteers who stood two hour watches 24 hours a day for a little over a year. The volunteers were largely organized through the Grange, a rural organization largely made up of farmers.
Colonel James T. Emmett was the state coordinator of the Ground Observation Corps. The USAF filter center in South Bend was commanded by Captain Forest R. Shafer. Military and affiliated organizations listed in the program from the commissioning ceremony were:
According to O'Connor, at times the USAF would fly aircraft in the vicinity of DL3-G without informing the observers. The flights were probably out of Bunker Hill AFB (a Strategic Air Command base near Peru, Indiana, which was renamed Grissom AFB in 1968). The expectation was that the aircraft would be detected, accurately identified, and reported to the USAF report filter center in South Bend over the dedicated telephone link. (see the Analysis section below for more on this)
The Ground Observation Corps program was scaled back in 1954 after the end of the Korean War, and the Cairo tower ceased operation. By the 1970's "Operation Skywatch" was a part of Civil Defense using volunteer severe weather spotters. In 1976 the tower was reconstructed, and a statue was commissioned for the memorial. In 1978 the Tippecanoe County Park Board considered, but did not create, a 15-acre park centered on the tower. In 1980 funds were raised to pay for the statue and to install it at the memorial.
 The statue (click to enlarge) |
 The statue (click to enlarge) |
 The statue (click to enlarge) |
 The statue (click to enlarge) |
 Sign at the statue (click to enlarge) |
 USAF Ground Observer Corps (click to enlarge) |
 Indiana Historical Sign (click to enlarge) |
The tower is on Tippecanoe County road 850 North just east of 100 West.
First, it seems highly unlikely that SAC analysis would conclude that Soviet strategic doctrine called for a first strike against the Tennessee Valley Authority. Far more likely first strike targets would depend on Soviet intentions:
Destruction of hydroelectric installations would be part of a longer term strategy aimed at disabling industrial output. TVA would be a target in a U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. strategic war, just not a target in the initial strike.
Second, flight from any Soviet military airfield to DL3-G would require flying over Canada, Alaska (in the case of Eastern Siberian airfields), and other obvious targets like major U.S. population centers (Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit) and SAC bases (Montana, North and South Dakota) before passing over DL3-G. See a great-circle map centered on DL3-G and showing Soviet air bases, based on a list of Russian air bases compiled at GlobalSecurity.org.
While Ground Observation Defense Posts around the perimeter of the country could have been of defensive value, it seems unlikely that Soviet bombers were expected to be first spotted while flying over north-central Indiana. My guess is that DL3-G and similar posts were used to evaluate civilian detection of USAF aircraft by visual and auditory means. In plain terms, would the average person notice and recognize them?
From 1947 through 1969 the USAF ran Project Blue Book, which ostensibly investigated unidentified flying objects that at times mystified the USAF. In the late 1990's it was revealed that the aims of Project Blue Book included concealing the existence and capabilities of advanced USAF reconnaisance craft such as the U-2 and SR-71, and analyzing the likelihood of their detection by civilian observers. Reports of UFOs to Project Blue Book were compared against logs of reconnaisance aircraft flights. The observers making the reports were never told of the real nature of what they saw — either "natural phenomena" or something the USAF said remained a mystery. [CIA, NYT, WP]
It stands to reason that the USSR had a project very similar to the Ground Observation Corps (undoubtedly non-volunteer!), and the USAF knew or at least suspected this. USAF mission planning needed some estimate of the likelihood that U.S. aircraft would be spotted by ground-based observers. The Ground Observer Corps could provide much-needed data.
| January 1943 | Bunker Hill NAS is activated near Peru, Indiana. [AFM] |
| 16 August 1952 | Cairo watch tower was commissioned. [LJC: 14,15,17,18 Aug 1952] |
| June 1954 | Bunker Hill AFB is reactivated near Peru, Indiana. It became a Strategic Air Command base for tankers. [AFM] |
| 1954 | DLG-3 was decommissioned after the Korean War ended. [LJC] |
| May 1968 | Bunker Hill AFB was renamed Grissom AFB. [AFM] |
| 1976 | The tower was reconstructed for the U.S. Bicentennial celebration. [LJC] |
| November 1976 | Memorial was dedicated at the reconstructed tower. [LJC] |
| February 1977 | Memorial statue was carved to commemorate the watch tower (although its $8000 price was not paid by the county for some time) [LJC] |
| August 1978 | Tippecanoe County Park Board considered forming a 15-acre park. [LJC] |
| May 1980 | Statue was finally installed at tower. [LJC] |
| October 1994 | Grissom AFB was realigned as USAF Reserve base. [AFM] |
Also see my other Cold War related pages.
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| © Bob Cromwell Feb 2012. Created with /bin/vi and ImageMagick, hosted on OpenBSD with Apache. Root password available here, privacy policy here. |
