List of USAF Strategic Wings Assigned To The Strategic Air Command

List Of USAF Strategic Wings Assigned To The Strategic Air Command

During the tremendous U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) expansion of the early and mid-fifties, bases become overcrowded, with some of them supporting as many as 90 B-47s and 40 KC-97s. The first B-52 wings were also extremely large - composed of 45 bombers and 15 or 20 KC-135s, all situated on one base. As the Soviet missile threat became more pronounced and warning time became less, SAC bases presented increasingly attractive targets. It was necessary to break up these large concentrations of aircraft and scatter them throughout more bases. Several KC-97 squadrons were separated from their parent B-47 wings and relocated to northern bases. The B-47 dispersal program was a long range one and would be affected primarily through the phase out of wings in the late fifties and early sixties.

With the B-52 force, which was still growing, dispersal became an active program in 1958. Basically the B-52 dispersal program called for larger B-52 wings already in existence to be broken up into three equal-sized wings of 15 aircraft each, with two of them being relocated, normally to bases of other commands. In essence, each dispersed B-52 squadron became a strategic wing. This principle would also be followed in organizing and equipping the remained of the B-52 force. Headquarters USAF established the entire force at 42 squadrons in 1958. Ideally, each B-52 wing would have an air refueling squadron of 10 or 15 aircraft.

By the end of 1958, SAC had activated 14 strategic wings, but only three had aircraft assigned. The others were in various stages of development, with some having only a headquarters and one officer and one airman authorized.”.

Read more about List Of USAF Strategic Wings Assigned To The Strategic Air Command:  Redesignation To AFCON Status

Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, strategic, wings, assigned, air and/or command:

    My list of things I never pictured myself saying when I pictured myself as a parent has grown over the years.
    Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)

    Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.
    Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)

    If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.
    Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but as if borne on gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him off from his feet.... His mind was clothed with wings; and raised on them, he lifted philosophy to heaven.
    William Hazlitt (1778–1830)

    The office of the prince and that of the writer are defined and assigned as follows: the nobleman gives rank to the written work, the writer provides food for the prince.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)

    That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!
    Willa Cather (1873–1947)

    I had now formed a clear and settled opinion, that the people of America were well warranted to resist a claim that their fellow-subjects in the mother-country should have the entire command of their fortunes, by taxing them without their consent.
    James Boswell (1740–1795)