History
The squadron was activated on 1 March 1959 as the 26th Air Defense Missile Squadron (BOMARC) and stood alert during the Cold War, equipped with IM-99 (later CIM-10) BOMARC surface to air antiaircraft missiles. The squadron was tied into a Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) direction center which could use analog computers to process information from ground radars, picket ships and airborne aircraft to accelerate the display of tracking data at the direction center to quickly direct the missile site to engage hostile aircraft. It was inactivated on 30 April 1972.
The BOMARC missile site was located 1 mile (1.6 km) north-northwest of Otis AFB at 41°40′56″N 070°32′21″W / 41.68222°N 70.53917°W / 41.68222; -70.53917 (26th ADMS). Although geographically separated from the base, it was an off base facility of Otis and the squadron received administrative and logistical support from Otis.
In 1985, the squadron was consolidated with the 26th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, a World War II unit of the Army Air Forces that had provided air support for the training of ground forces, but has never been active with this designation.
Read more about this topic: 26th Tactical Missile Squadron
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“To summarize the contentions of this paper then. Firstly, the phrase ‘the meaning of a word’ is a spurious phrase. Secondly and consequently, a re-examination is needed of phrases like the two which I discuss, ‘being a part of the meaning of’ and ‘having the same meaning.’ On these matters, dogmatists require prodding: although history indeed suggests that it may sometimes be better to let sleeping dogmatists lie.”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)