85th Air Division - History

History

During World War II, the 85th Fighter Wing was a command and control organization of Fifth Air Force, operating primarily in the Southwest Pacific Theater. Its assigned units participated in aerial combat in New Guinea and the Philippine Islands (February 1944 – August 1945) flyingt cover missions for convoys, patrols, escorted bombers, attacked enemy airfields, and supported ground forces.

After the war's end, the organization provided fighter protection for the Philippine Islands and conducted an intensive training program in aerial combat, gunnery, and instrument flying, until the units inactivation in June 1948.

During the Cold War the unit was reactivated as an Air Division by Air Defense Command. It was assigned to the Eastern Air Defense Force in September 1955 with a mission to intercept unidentified aircraft over the Washington, D.C. area. It participated in numerous training exercises. It also took part in gunnery and air-launched training and readiness tests. Inactivated in September 1958.

Read more about this topic:  85th Air Division

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.
    William James (1842–1910)

    There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.
    Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)