The 7th Air Division (7 AD) served the United States Air Force with distinction from early 1944 through early 1992, earning an outstanding unit decoration and a service streamer along the way.
The division provided air defense of the Hawaiian Islands April 1944 – September 1948.
In 1951 as part of the Strategic Air Command, the division controlled deployed bombardment and reconnaissance forces between 1951 and 1965. It participated in alerts, exercises, operational readiness inspections, evaluations, and intensive training programs to provide an advanced combat ready force. It also assumed responsibility for air base construction and improvement, which included building complexes to accommodate bombers, fighters, and special functions such as communications, weapons storage, aircraft parts, and navigational aids.
From 1978, the division was activated in Europe to provide command and control for SAC units assigned to USAFE, primarily air refueling and reconnaissance organizations, but also ground support units such as the 3920th Strategic Wing. It assured that assigned units trained to conduct strategic warfare according to the Emergency War Order. It also assured that assigned units could conduct strategic reconnaissance and air refueling and function as the nucleus of a SAC advanced echelon in event of contingency operations.
Famous quotes containing the words air and/or division:
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions: and has often, in reality, the force ascribed to it.
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—David Hume (1711–1776)