[eesmith]

I'm pretty sure some of the air traffic controllers for military airfields in WWII were draftees, just like many air defense operators were draftees before the military became an all-volunteer force in 1973.

We know from the PATCO strike there is a pool of spare ATCs, including "military controllers, and retired personnel who temporarily returned to service". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...

Thus, retired civilian personnel is a possible draft pool for a skilled job like ATC which require passing a lot of exams.

That pool is small, certainly, but it was enough to break PATCO.