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The master pilot and his untested Civil Air Patrol search party orbited the Alaskan bush between Anchorage and Mount McKinley. All eyes were on the ground, looking for evidence of an aircraft wreckage.

Two hours into their sector — full of bears, leafy brown plains and brisk Memorial Day air traffic — the team spied the speck of a wreck from 1,500 feet.

The search team honed their skills in this aerial confidence course. Someday members might fly an actual emergency mission over Alaska, sometimes called the inland aerial search capital of America.

Airmanship, courage, vigilance and sacrifice pervade Alaska — the sprawling land where many citizens own private airplanes. And where one-third of the CAP’s forces never have served in the military. No problem. They’re serving humanity with their civic duty today.

The Civil Air Patrol is the official Air Force auxiliary — a nonprofit and federally chartered corporation of nearly 60,000 people age 12 and up. Their storied and aggressive start was in 1941. As a flying “neighborhood watch with bombs,” they were on patrol against Nazi subs and other menaces to national defense a week before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Since that dark time, the United States’ need for this volunteer group has increased, although the mission has changed.

Official Air Force Photo by Tech. Sgt. John Lasky

Floats and skis

The Alaska Civil Air Patrol flies 31 corporate fixed-wing search planes — some in stock trim. Others are custom-outfitted with floats or skis. Each hauls a crew of three, four or six on air hunts.

Searchers find crash sites and radio their findings to a dispatcher. Then other agencies pick up the survivors. In Alaska that process amounts to about 100 “saves” yearly.

A commercially rated pilot flies the aircrew within an assigned inland search grid. A “scanner” crew member — who sits in the rear seat of the single-engine aircraft — looks for wreckage and other air traffic. In the right front seat, an “observer” primarily navigates and picks up distress signals.

On the ground, volunteer airfield operators brief people and schedule other missions.

The CAP, for example, can have several search aircraft teams orbiting Alaska’s sprawling land mass. Their senior members work closely with the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center at Camp Denali on Fort Richardson. This interagency organization responds to about 400 rescue calls each year.

The center is also the CAP’s mission-based planning staff in Alaska. While a team at Camp Denali does much of the flight following, planning and directing, the CAP focuses its missions for the center’s time-sensitive searches. Such a support structure is particularly helpful during costly, and often overlapping, multiday searches that require several rescue craft.

“This is unlike other wings. The amount of saves they do is probably double or triple what the ‘lower 48’ does,” said Lt. Col. Randy

Official Air Force Photo by Tech. Sgt. John Lasky

Mathis, the Civil Air Patrol-Air Force Pacific Liaison Region commander at Beale Air Force Base, Calif.

Credit for all lives saved in Alaska is about equally divided among Civil Air Patrol, Air Guard, Army Guard and municipal forces, he said.

Special arsenal

Seventy-five feet of wood planking squeaked and swayed with friendly familiarity under the weight of Bob Brouillette’s brown Wellington boots. Shock waves in the water underneath the dock obscured an upside-down view of what could be called the wettest U.S. government airfield — the Alaska Civil Air Patrol’s floatplane base and maintenance facility at Lake Hood in Anchorage.

Brouillette flies and manages the CAP facility that maintains 31 aircraft and five gliders. His staff includes three full-time mechanics. He learned about the CAP when he retired from the Air Force in 1970.

“I was always interested in making civilians proud of the military,” he said. “This fulfills that requirement.”

Official Air Force Photo by Tech. Sgt. John Lasky

Two of the patrol’s float planes are always ready for duty for Alaska’s many lakes and 17,500 miles of inland water ways — even during winter. This includes the state’s 28,000 miles of glaciers.

Aircraft from Alaska’s state law enforcement and National Guard are also in the search chain. But — logistically and financially — the Civil Air Patrol is the area’s first search force.

Growth from within

Across town in Anchorage is the bright blue-and-white Polaris Civil Air Patrol compound at Merrill Field. CAP leaders tweak the curiosity of 12 young cadets.

Cadets don’t fly searches, but many do learn to refuel and fly aircraft — and discourage drug use among peers. These are forms of “cadet education,” said Capt. Stanley Bolling, the Reserve’s individual mobilization augmentee to squadrons in Alaska.

Bolling is a native of the state and a former active-duty air weapons instructor. He teaches technology, aerospace and math at Anchorage’s Bartlett High — subject areas that help him motivate cadets who attend the school.

Just 25 air miles from Merrill Field stands a flight meeting center where members practice aerospace education. The town, airport and auxiliary derive their natural name — Birchwood — from the surrounding trees

Exuberant cadets marshal $250,000 aircraft at Birchwood — with senior members shadowing them. Their spirit and curiosity make

those fictitious youths from “Lord of the Flies” seem like wimpy wannabes.

One clear motivating factor for cadets remains encased. It’s a German-made glider so advanced the U.S. Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., leases one as the TG-9. On this three-day holiday weekend, cadets at Birchwood raised their voices in unanimous support of glider flights being rolled into the patrol’s cadet and aviation education charters.

“Everybody was out of their seats, going ‘Yes!’ there’s a glider coming down,” said Cadet Naythan Hansen, an excited visitor from Kenai, Alaska.

The charismatic glider offers cadets quality air time at a sliver of the fixed-wing flying hour expense. It’s one big way the leaders motivate cadets.

There are rewards for the patrol’s senior members, too. They can rotate through the core emergency leadership positions at Birchwood — from the office to radio communications, or on search parties.

Fortunately, the intensive aerial drills in clear summer weather were not interrupted by any calls to real, dire action. But more than a few senior members had ears trained to rescue radio bands for field calls that could have turned into riveting, all-out holiday search calls.

Bethany Morgan of Anchorage listened and labored. As a volunteer she’s ready on the invisible edge members maintain between “practice” and “real world” at Birchwood. Although she works full time, Morgan has been on three searches. Once over the exotic grand spine of the lower Alaska-Canada frontier.

“When we’re on exercises, we search for a target, and it’s a scientific mindset. But an actual search is different,” she explained. “You’re searching for a life.”

Saving others is at the core of CAP service.

Above Article by Tech. Sgt. John B. Dendy IV, Published in Airman's Magazine