Royal Observer Corps
The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 December 1995, when the Corps' civilian volunteers were stood down. (ROC headquarters staff at RAF Bentley Priory stood down on 31 March 1996). Composed mainly of civilian spare-time volunteers, ROC personnel wore a Royal Air Force (RAF) style uniform and latterly came under the administrative control of RAF Strike Command and the operational control of the Home Office. Civilian volunteers were trained and administered by a small cadre of professional full-time officers under the command of the Commandant Royal Observer Corps; latterly a serving RAF Air Commodore.
CFB North Bay
The Ground Observer Corps (GObC) was a Canada-wide organization created by the RCAF to assist in defence of the nation against a Soviet nuclear air attack. Established on 1 October 1952, and headed by Air Defence Command, 50,000 civilian GObC volunteers from every walk of life, from housewives to Jesuit priests, watched the skies with binoculars and reported aircraft sightings by telephone to filter centres. Some GObC volunteers also set up sound-detection equipment at their own expense to search for the sound of aircraft engines at night, bad weather, and during heavy cloud cover, when visual sightings were impossible.