The 444th Air Expeditionary Wing was a United States Air Force provisional unit possibly allocated to Air Materiel Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF). The composition and stationing of the unit was never officially disclosed, and it was inactivated after the invasion of Iraq was completed.
During World War II, the 444th Bombardment Group was a United States Army Air Forces combat organization. It was inactivated on 1 October 1946. During World War II the group was the first B-29 Superfortress Group formed for the elite 58th Bombardment Wing, and served primarily in the Pacific Ocean theater and China Burma India Theater of World War II as part of the Twentieth Air Force. The group's aircraft engaged in very heavy bombardment operations against Japan. After its reassignment to the Mariana Islands in 1945, its aircraft were identified by a "N" and a triangle painted on the tail.
In the early postwar era, the 444th Bombardment Group was one of the original ten USAAF bombardment groups assigned to Strategic Air Command (SAC) on 21 March 1946. The unit was inactivated on 1 October 1946 at Davis-Monthan AAF, Arizona; its B-29 aircraft and personnel being reassigned to the senior 43d Bombardment Group which was reactivated due to the Air Force's policy of retaining only low-numbered groups on active duty after the war.
Famous quotes containing the word group:
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)