530th Bombardment Squadron - History

History

Established in late 1942 as a B-24 Liberator heavy bomb squadron; trained under Second Air Force in Texas, and later in Colorado. Deployed to the Southwest Pacific Area (SPA) in April 1943, being assigned to Fifth Air Force in Australia.

From airfields in Australia, including Fenton Airfield, the squadron reached out to the Japanese installations in the Netherlands East Indies. Moved to the Philippines where the squadron operated in early 1945, then to Okinawa where combat operations ended after the Japanese Capitulation in August. After the war, squadron personnel were demobilized and returned to the United States, the B-24s sent to reclamation in the Philippines. Inactivated as a paper unit in early 1946.

In 1947, the squadron was reactivated as a reserve unit of the Strategic Air Command at MacDill Field, Florida. The squadron remained an inactive reserve unit until 1951 when the squadron was inactivated.

The squadron was again activated in 1955 as part of the 380th Strategic Aerospace Wing and equipped with the B-47 Stratojet. Flying the B-47, the squadron took a place as part of SAC's nuclear deterrent to war which were designed to carry nuclear weapons and to penetrate Soviet air defenses with its high operational ceiling and near supersonic speed. The squadron flew the B-47 for about a decade when by the mid-1960s it had become obsolescent and vulnerable to new Soviet air defenses. The squadron began to send its stratojets to AMARC at Davis-Monthan AFB for retirement, being inactivated in 1966.

Read more about this topic:  530th Bombardment Squadron

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
    In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
    Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
    Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)

    Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...
    Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)