Coordinates: 44°08′42″N 103°06′13″W / 44.145°N 103.10361°W / 44.145; -103.10361 (Ellsworth AFB)
The 44th Missile Wing (44 MW) is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with Twentieth Air Force, being assigned to Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota. It was inactivated on 4 July 1994.
For over 40 years the 44th was a front-line Strategic Air Command wing, initially as a B-47 Stratojet medium bomber unit in the 1950s. With the phaseout of the B-47, the wing became a LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM unit in the 1960s, being inactivated in 1994 as part of the drawdown of U.S. strategic forces after the end of the Cold War.
During World War II, its predecessor unit, the 44th Bombardment Group was the first B-24 Liberator heavy bombardment group of VIII Bomber Command stationed in England. Colonel Leon W. Johnson, while commander of the 44th Bombardment Group, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Ploesti Raid on 1 August 1943.
Famous quotes containing the words missile and/or wing:
“... the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“No Raven’s wing can stretch the flight so far
As the torn bandrols of Napoleon’s war.
Choose then your climate, fix your best abode,
He’ll make you deserts and he’ll bring you blood.
How could you fear a dearth? have not mankind,
Tho slain by millions, millions left behind?
Has not conscription still the power to weild
Her annual faulchion o’er the human field?
A faithful harvester!”
—Joel Barlow (1754–1812)