Blog Posting # 870; Copyright 12 December 2025. EducateMHC
Know this! HUD-Code manufactured housing (‘MH’) is federally-regulated, performance-based, affordable-attainable, factory-built housing (a.k.a. one of four types of offsite construction, those being manufactured, modular & panelized housing, plus Park Model RVs or accessory dwelling units a.k.a. ADUs). Offsite construction is routinely paired with traditional stick-built, single-family residential housing (a.k.a. onsite construction) which is tallied and reported monthly, per building permits, by the U.S. Census Bureau. No one tallies and reports offsite construction! Land lease communities (a.k.a. manufactured home communities & ‘mobile home parks’) are the commercial real estate (‘CRE’) component of MH. And, along with various types of housing finance (e.g. chattel or ‘home only’ loans, and real estate-secured mortgages) constitutes the post-production segment of the MH industry.
EducateMHC is an MH historian, trade term and trend tracker, as well as perennial MH information source! Contact EducateMHC via (317) 881-3815; email gfa7156@aol.com, or www.educatemhc.com, to purchase ‘Community Management in the Manufactured Housing Industry’- a book that belongs in every land lease community nationwide, and ‘SWAN SONG’ – History of land lease communities & official record of annual MH production totals since 1955.
And my autobiography, ‘From SmittyAlpha6 to MHMaven’, describes personal combat adventures in Vietnam as a USMC lieutenant, a 45 year entrepreneur business career in MH & community ownership, as well as freelance consulting and authoring of 20 nonfiction texts.
George Allen is the sole emeritus member of the Manufactured Housing Institute (”MHI’), a founding board member of MHI’s National Communities Council (‘NCC’) division, RV/MH Hall of Fame enshrinee, as well as Allen Legacy columnist & editor at large for ‘MHInsider’ magazine.
OUR MOTHER WAS AN AIRCRAFT SPOTTER DURING WWII
My brother Mark Allen is a columnist for the ‘Cape May Star & Wave’ newspaper in New Jersey. He recently (11/26/2025) penned and titled his weekly feature: ‘Aircraft spotters played key role in WWII’. What follows here is a marked departure (excusing the pun) from the usual fare of this weekly blog posting, but I think you’ll enjoy the lightly edited history lesson.
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It is a small strip of wool cloth, royal blue in color, maybe four inches wide by 18 inches long. In the middle of the cloth, gold wings bracket a white disc bearing ‘AWS’ in large letters. Surrounding the ‘AWS’ is ‘U.S. Army Air Force’, and under the disc, ‘OBSERVER’
This is an armband once worn by my mother Margaret J. Allen, during World War II when she volunteered as an observer for the Aircraft Warning Service, or AWS. I came across the armband recently while cleaning out an ancient footlocker, long forgotten in an equally ancient attic. It was not my first time seeing the armband, as I remember discovering it years ago while a small boy.
I had been intrigued then, as I still am, reflecting on my mother’s wartime service. This time however, in addition to the armband I found other related items. There’s an ‘Aircraft Spotters’ Guide’, edited by Lt. Col. Harold F. Harney. Published in 1942, the book contains “three positon silhouettes, general specifications and photographs of fighting planes of the U.S., Great Britain, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and France.”
There was also a ‘Silhouette Handbook of U.S. Army Air Forces Airplanes’, published in 1942. Tucked inside this handbook were two answer sheets completed in my mother’s beautiful cursive penmanship. I suspect my mother had been much dismayed, taking the aircraft recognition test, since she correctly identified only seven of 13 planes. Fortunately, she did far better on the second test, in which she sketched 16 different wing and rudder configurations.
Since there was a war going on, this ‘Silhouette Handbook’ warned it was classified as being restricted’. Furthermore, the cover also warned the content was subject to the Espionage Act, and transmission of its contents to unauthorized persons was prohibited.
Mother was one of 750,000 volunteers who manned observation posts and associated information/filter centers set up along both coasts during the early days of World War II. Even before 7 December 1941 (i.e. attack on Pearl Harbor naval base) there had been concern about the development of long-range bombers that might make the coasts vulnerable to aerial attack. That concern prompted the Army Air Force to organize the AWS under the auspices of the 1st Interceptor Command.
On the east coast, thousands of observation posts were established, from the northern edge of Maine to the southern tip of Florida, extending inland to the western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains. Each post had its own code name and number. When an aircraft was spotted, it would be logged and a ‘flash’ message forwarded to the respective Army Filter Center.
Observers were taught to transmit their ‘slash’ messages in short, concise phrases that conveyed: number of aircraft, estimated altitude, heading, and number of engines. For example, eight four-engine aircraft flying north at 13,000 feet might be transmitted via ‘flash’ message as “eight-high-north-four”. Rather than being ‘manned’, the vast majority of those 750,000 AWS observers were women.
Upon launch of the AWS, Adelaide Rickenbacker, wife of famous WWI fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker, volunteered to recruit women as AWS observers. And women of all backgrounds volunteered: housewives, office workers, actresses, nurses, teachers, and entertainers. I remember my mother telling me my grandmother even served as a volunteer observer.
AWS training was serious business. Extensive training of Aircraft Spotters was so successful that spotting spilled over into the general population, giving rise to a new hobby for men and women alike. With the plethora of books, publications, and Aircraft Spotters’ Guides, aircraft recognition clubs and ‘recognition bees’ sprang up along both coasts. Hard plastic or rubber aircraft models were widely used as a means for acquainting observers and hobbyists with the many different types and variants of aircraft, and how they looked from different perspectives. Today those models, when found, are sought by museums, and often worth hundreds of dollars.
Observation posts were as varied as they were numerous. They were situated at elevated locations that offered clear views in all or most directions, especially toward the coast. Fire towers, elevated water tanks, church steeples, and tall buildings were all employed as AWS observation posts. As a boy, when I came across my mother’s armband, I inquired about her observation post. It had been atop the old Glassboro Ice House. She also told me my grandmother’s post had been the East Point Lighthouse at the mouth of the Maurice River.
In retrospect, we know today the aerial threat was indeed very real. At that time, Adolf Hitler’s scientists were racing to develop a nuclear weapon, and his engineers striving to design what they called the ‘New York Bomber’. If his plans had come to fruition, the New York Bomber, not the Enola Gay, would have delivered the first nuclear weapon to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington, DC.
So now you know how our government and citizens protected our nation from attack 80 years ago!
Next week? Depends on whether the U.S. Census Bureau is back up and running (i.e. tallying and reporting on the number of onsite construction permits, construction starts, and completions. I have the data for offsite construction, just waiting on the ‘dog to catch up with its’ tail’, so to speak.
George Allen