91st Bombardment Group

91st Bombardment Group

The 91st Bomb Group (Heavy) was an air combat unit of the United States Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Classified as a heavy bombardment group, the 91st operated B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft and was known unofficially as "The Ragged Irregulars" or as "Wray's Ragged Irregulars", after the commander who took the group to England. During its service in World War II the unit consisted of the 322nd, 323rd, 324th, and 401st Bomb Squadrons. The 91st Bomb Group is most noted as the unit in which the bomber Memphis Belle flew, and for having suffered the greatest number of losses of any heavy bomb group in World War II.

The 91st Bomb Group conducted 340 bombing missions with the Eighth Air Force over Europe, operating out of RAF Bassingbourn. Inactivated at the end of the war, the group was brought back in 1947 as a reconnaissance group of the United States Air Force, and then had its lineage and honors bestowed on like-numbered wings of the Strategic Air Command and the Air Force Space Command.

From 1 July 1947, until its drawdown in February 1952, the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Group provided worldwide surveillance, flying RB-29s, RB-45s and RB-47s as a subordinate component of the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, consisting of the 322nd, 323rd, and 324th Straetgic Recon Squadrons, and the 91st Air Refueling Squadron (Medium). The group was inactivated on 28 May 1952, as part of an SAC-wide termination of groups as an organizational echelon, while the wing and all subordinate units remained active until 8 November 1957.

The group was activated in 1991 as the 91st Operations Group. Between 1991 and 1994, and since 1996, the 91st Operations Group, as part of the 91st Space Wing, maintains the alert force of Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles maintained at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. Its three missile squadrons, however, have no traditional link to the 91st Bomb Group and were previously part of the 455th Strategic Missile Wing and 455th Bomb Group.