When summer traffic crawls, the Civil Air Patrol soars

By Bill Newcott
Photograph by Bill Newcott
From the August 2022 issue

august-2022-issue

The good news is there’s surprisingly little traffic on Route 1 heading down from Dover this afternoon, especially considering this is Friday before a long holiday weekend. From my back seat in this Cessna 182T, I can see that even the gauntlet of traffic lights in Dewey Beach — I call it the Bottle & Cork Bottleneck — is flowing freely. 

The less good news is this givesmy flying companions very little to report to the Delaware Department of Transportation. Ostensibly, the reason we’re up here, making a lazy, 30-mile-long loop up and down the Delaware coast, is to help DelDOT keep track of the expected holiday backups. 

But pilot Bill Trussell doesn’t seem to mind the absence of snarls down there, and neither does his co-pilot, Phil Schlosser. The most important thing to them, it’s easy to see, is that they are up here, taking in the vista of green land, sinuous waterways and blue sea.


And I’m of the same opinion, hitching a ride as the Civil Air Patrol flies through its latest mission, one of thousands in the group’s eight-decade history. 

Made up completely of volunteer private pilots — men and women ranging in age from their early 40s to their early 70s; commercial pilots to crop-duster flyers — the Civil Air Patrol is a fully recognized reserve unit of the U.S. Air Force. These days, the CAP’s missions tend toward traffic runs like this one and the occasional search-and-rescue operation. But there was a time when the coastal Delaware Civil Air Patrol literally flew to the defense of America itself.

As the clouds of World War II began to gather in early 1941, the U.S. government began wondering how it would defend the homeland once military service members headed overseas. It was New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, asked by President Franklin Roosevelt to head the federal Office of Civil Defense, who hatched the idea of a corps of civilian flyers — too young or too old to enlist, or physically unfit for full military service — to patrol the coastlines of America. 

That was more than 80 years ago. The U.S. Air Force, by comparison, is only 75. 

The first unit of the CAP was established in New Jersey. The second was based at the old Rehoboth Airport, a grass aerodrome that once spread across an area where Rehoboth Shores Estates now sits behind the present-day Rehoboth Marketplace shopping center on Route 1. (Airport Road remains in that area as a reminder of the historic airfield).  

But although New Jersey’s unit was established first, Rehoboth’s beat them into the air.

“We like to joke that the guys in Jersey were waiting for an attendant to come pump their gas,” says Dave Morrow, the volunteer press liaison for Sussex County’s Coastal Patrol Base 2 Memorial Composite Squadron. 

The units’ war mission was dead serious: Day and night they patrolled the coastline, keeping a lookout for signs of Nazi submarines. Combined with the fire-control towers that still stand along Delaware’s beaches, which, along with the big guns on Cape Henlopen, were intended to defend against surface vessels, the planes effectively foiled Hitler’s plans to hold East Coast shipping hostage. 

At first, CAP pilots merely radioed in the coordinates of any intruders, but eventually the planes were fitted with small bombs and depth charges. By war’s end, 100,000 CAP pilots — men and women ages 18 and up — had found 173 Axis subs, attacked 57, hit 10 and sunken two. They’d flown about 87,000 missions spanning some 24 million air miles. 

 In fact, the story goes that a German high seas admiral was asked why Hitler had pulled his subs from the U.S. waters so early in the war.

“It was those damned red and yellow planes!” he exclaimed.

After our smooth takeoff from Delaware Coastal Airport near Georgetown, we’ve turned south and flown directly to the Indian River Inlet, following a path a few miles in from the shoreline. It didn’t take long to reach our cruising altitude of just 1,500 feet. Much higher than that and details on the ground would become too difficult to discern. 

I lower my head against the plexiglass window and look upward. Some 2,500 feet above us, at 4,000 feet, puffy clouds float like cotton balls set on a glass tabletop. 

We swing around the bay side of the four-spired bridge spanning the inlet. Even from up here, the whitewater violence of the tide pushing through the channel is apparent. Heading back north, just off Delaware Seashore State Park, we’re now over the Atlantic, tracing the coastline, passing above beachgoers who are most likely wondering why this small plane is not towing a banner advertising happy hour at the Rusty Rudder. 

Were this an ocean-based search-and-rescue mission, we might venture farther out over the water. But regulations have been tightened considerably since those wild west days of World War II: While on duty, the CAP’s planes are not permitted to fly any father out than their possible glide path to land, in case of mechanical failure. 

That was definitely not the case during World War II. Flying their fragile private craft, CAP pilots ventured up to 200 miles offshore, averaging just 300 feet in altitude — far too low to use a parachute if things got dicey. 

Things don’t get much dicier than they did about 20 miles off the shore of Rehoboth Beach on July 21, 1942. A CAP plane piloted by volunteer Henry Cross went down in strong winds, and a CAP rescue plane, an amphibious craft capable of landing on the water, was sent to the rescue. But the seas were so rough that when the rescue plane, piloted by CAP Maj. Hugh Sharp and Lt. Edmond Edwards, landed on the churning waves, one of the two pontoons was damaged and began taking on water. The plane was listing dangerously to one side. Not only was there no hope of taking off again, the aircraft itself was in danger of sinking.  

There was only one option: After hauling Cross aboard — he’d suffered a broken back — Sharp and Edwards revved up the engine just enough to taxi all the way back to shore. And to keep the plane from tipping, Edwards climbed out onto the opposite wing, providing enough weight to counterbalance the list. 

He stayed there for more than seven hours before reaching shore. The pair were eventually invited to the White House, where Roosevelt presented them with Air Medals. Over the course of the war, some 800 such medals were awarded to CAP volunteers, but Sharp’s and Edwards’ were the first and only ones ever awarded to CAP members for specific actions. 

At the north end of surprisingly quiet Dewey, we turn inland, following the direction of Route 1. I’m a little disappointed we won’t be sticking to the shoreline, flying over Silver Lake and Rehoboth Beach and Gordons Pond. But while I’m here for sightseeing, my hosts are not. It’s Route 1 traffic they’re monitoring. If you happen to look up any Friday evening, Saturday afternoon or Sunday evening during the summer tourist season, you may well spot the CAP’s distinctive red-white-and-blue planes checking out the traffic patterns. 

The roar of the Cessna’s engine makes it impossible to chat directly, so the three of us are wearing closed-circuit headphones.“Where is everybody?” asks co-pilot Schlosser.“Maybe they’re already having dinner,” says Trussell. For a few fleeting seconds, Rehoboth Avenue aligns beneath us, pointing like an arrow to the sea.“Plenty of parking, too,” says Schlosser.

We’re above Tanger Land now. The stores are busy, and judging by the parking lot, Jungle Jim’s waterpark seems to be doing brisk business too. But Route 1, which we had all expected to be thick this Friday afternoon — after a week that had been, by all accounts, pretty hell­acious — looks positively Sunday morning-like. 

World War II ace Gregory “Pappy” Boyington famously described flying as “hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror,” so I can’t sit here and complain that things aren’t exciting enough this afternoon. Besides, the pilots of the CAP are charged with doing a lot more than just monitoring SUVs carrying families on holiday. A big part of their job is to be an all-purpose eye in the sky.

“One of the things we do is simply look out for anything unusual,” says Trussell. “We’re up here so much, we can recognize something that’s not quite right.”

A big red flag, for instance, would be a tanker truck parked suspiciously beneath an underpass. 

The black ribbon of Route 1 is unrolling beneath us. To our right, the University of Delaware wind turbine churns, like a spindly giant doing calisthenics. Beyond the entrance to Delaware Bay, Cape May hugs the southernmost Jersey Shore — and way to the northeast, illuminated by the low late-afternoon sun, I can make out the hotel and casino towers of Atlantic City.

“You should see it at night,” says Trussell. “It looks like Oz.”

As always when I get a chance to fly over coastal Delaware, I am gratified to realize the place is not really about to be utterly paved over by developments with ironic names like The Preserve and The Woodland. It is still woods and farmland that occupy most of my field of view, and after we make a big swing around Milford — using Bayhealth Hospital as a pivot point — inland forests stretch as far as the eye can see.

We’re now patrolling Route 113, heading south. The highway bisects Redden State Forest, unfurled like a green fleece. We pass over the brown dirt of the Georgetown Speedway, above the startlingly sapphire blue waters of the large sand and gravel pit just west of Route 113. Now we are at the upper reaches of the Indian River — the stacks of the coal-fired power plant visually echoing the distant towers of the inlet bridge. To the west, the low afternoon sun is reflecting silver light off the Nanticoke and Choptank rivers, and if I use my imagination I can make out the Chesapeake outlining the far side of the Delmarva Peninsula. 

But still, mysteriously, the Friday night traffic is uncharacteristically light. It is at times like these, especially, when I imagine DelDOT is especially happy to have the services of the CAP: The state gets the use of this crew and their Cessna for a bargain basement $140 an hour, to cover fuel costs. A Delaware State Police helicopter runs about $3,500 an hour — a lot of money to spend cruising the skies for hours and finding little more than an eight-car backup at the Route 16 traffic light. 

“We’ve been invited to check out a rollover accident up in Wilmington,” says Trussell. “But we’re going to skip that one.”

A second sweep around the inlet bridge and we’re heading back to Georgetown. I’m sorry our patrol is nearing its end; then again, despite the cushioned headphones, the roar of the Cessna’s single engine has been rattling my head for more than an hour. I’m pretty sure my tinnitus will be complaining about this for several days to come. 

Schlosser directs my attention out the left window, pointing downward. Against the light green background of the Rehoboth Bay grasslands, I spot a distinctive outline several hundred feet below us. It is an American bald eagle, wings extended, catching an updraft. 

“We’re gonna name him Joe Walsh,” says Trussell, and he seems happy that I laugh.

“The younger guys,” he says, “none of them would get that.”