I cannot understand why the Civil Air Patrol was let to go. In the 50s-60s, my father was a member and he took his duty seriously. Today, as far as I can tell, nothing remains.
Think about it, back in the 60s, Civil Defense was a big deal, today no one cares. That sucks.
I had a great time in the CAP in the late 50s. I was never quite clear on how one could get a "commission" as a CAP officer, but since I had a commercial rating I was given pilot privileges in our local squadron, and also taught a weekly class for the cadets. Once a year all the squadrons in the state gathered to conduct a "SARCAP" (search and rescue, CAP) exercise. These would be set up by an Air Force team, which would lay out a simulated crash or a chute canopy for us to look for. We had either Aeronca L-16s or Super Cubs (L-21?) which had been handed down from Army liaison service. We bought our own gas, even in the SARCAP exercises as I recall. Once in a while we would run a local one for the cadets and take a few of them up to work as observers. None of the aircraft even had radios so sometimes we dropped messages in cans to ground personnel.
I never flew in an actual crash search, but I know they did take place and often were successful. There was an airline Convair 240 that hit a mountain at night, almost 100 miles off course. It was a week before a student pilot spotted the crash remains. In the days before mandatory locator beacon transmitters, air searches were very necessary.