History
Formed in Australia in early 1942 by a combination of Fifth Air Force personnel and B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft that escaped from the Philippines and replacement aircraft that reached Australia from Hawaii and via the South Atlantic air ferry route from Florida, and arriving in Western Australia. As the 40th Reconnaissance Squadron, the squadron evacuated General Douglas MacArthur and President Manuel Quezon from Del Monte Field in the Philippine Islands in March 1942.
Redesignated as 435th Bombardment Squadron and engaged in strategic bombardment of enemy targets in New Guinea; Coral Sea and Solomon Islands from Northern Queensland. Withdrawn from combat in November 1942 when the B-17C/E models in Australia were replaced by long-range B-24 Liberators, and the unit was returned to the United States and became an operational training unit with II Bomber Command for replacement B-17 personnel.
In April 1944, re-equipped with B-29 Superfortresses and assigned to Eighth Air Force on Okinawa during August 1945. Never engaged in combat due to Japanese Capitulation in August 1945. Remained on Okinawa until inactivated in May 1946.
Read more about this topic: 435th Bombardment Squadron
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)