History
Activated on 15 Jan 1941 at Hamilton Field, California as a P-40 Warhawk pursuit group as part of the defense buildup of the United States prior to World War II.
Deployed to Alaska in mid-1942 and engaged the Japanese during the Aleutian Campaign during World War II. Engaged in combat in the Aleutians, 1942-1943 with long-range P-38 Lightnings. Remained in Alaska after the removal of Japanese forces, flying long range escorts for B-24 Liberator bombing attacks of northern Japanese Kurile Islands, inactivated in 1946.
Reactivated by redesignation of North Dakota Air National Guard 175th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron in 1952 which was reverted to state control. Assigned to Air Defense Command. Mission was to provide air defense for upper Midwest. Assumed ANG F-51D Mustangs, upgraded to F-84D Thunderjet jet aircraft being returned from combat in Korea in July 1953. Upgraded to F-84Gs in December 1953; upgraded to F-86D Sabre in April 1954; upgraded to F-89J Scorpion interceptors in 1957. Inactivated on 25 Dec 1960.
Reactivated as an F-15 Eagle air superiority squadron in Alaska in 1987, it provided air defense until being inactivated in 2000.
Read more about this topic: 54th Fighter Squadron
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)