History
The wing's lineage and honors can be traced not just through its own history, but through the history of three earlier organizations:
- The 501st Bombardment Group (501st BG) (1944–1946)
- The 701st Tactical Missile Wing (701st TMW) (1956–1958)
- The 501st Tactical Missile Wing (501st TMW) (1982–1991)
The 501st BG was a World War II United States Army Air Forces combat organization serving primarily in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II. The 501st BG was part of Twentieth Air Force and engaged in very heavy bombardment B-29 Superfortress operations against Japan. Its aircraft were identified by a "Y" inside a diamond painted on the tail.
The 701st TMW served in West Germany during the Cold War in the 1950s. The 501st TMW operated Ground Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCM) at RAF Greenham Common, England during the Cold War in the 1980s.
Read more about this topic: 501st Combat Support Wing
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“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)