485th Air Expeditionary Wing
The 485th Air Expeditionary Wing (485 AEW) is a provisional United States Air Force unit assigned to the Air Combat Command. As a provisional unit, the 485 AEW may be inactivated or activated at any time by Air Combat Command.
The wing was last known to be active during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, located at Tabuk Regional Airport, Saudi Arabia, in 2003.
A B-24 Liberator Fifteenth Air Force heavy bomb group during World War II, the 485th Bombardment Group returned to the United States in May 1945, being converted into a B-29 Superfortress Very Heavy bombardment group, undergoing training by Second Air Force when the war ended in August 1945. The group remained at its stage-3 training base, Smoky Hill AAF, Kansas after the war.
In the postwar era, the 485th Bombardment Group was one of the original ten USAAF bombardment groups assigned to Strategic Air Command on 21 March 1946. The group was inactivated on 4 August 1946 at Smoky Hill Army Airfield, Kansas due to the Air Force's policy of retaining only low-numbered groups on active duty after the war. It's B-29 aircraft, personnel and equipment being activated as the senior 97th Bombardment Group in an administrative redesignation.
During the 1980s, the 485th was reactivated as a GLCM Cruise Missile wing in Belgium. Inactivated as a result of the INF treaty in 1989,
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—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“the uncomfortable angels that rot
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Turns you, like them, to stone....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)