History
Activated as a B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomb squadron; trained under Second Air Force. Completed training in early 1943; deploying to European Theater of Operations (ETO) assigned to VIII Bomber Command in England. Engaged in long-range strategic bombardment operations over Occupied Europe and Nazi Germany, March 1944-May 1945 attacking enemy military and industrial targets as part of the United States' air offensive against Nazi Germany. Most personnel demobilized in Europe after the German capitulation in May 1945; squadron inactivated as a paper unit in November.
Reactivated in 1947 as a B-29 Superfortress squadron in the reserves, however equipped with trainers until 1949 when equipped with B-26 Invader light bomber. Squadron activated in 1951 as a result of the Korean War; personnel and equipment assigned as replacements to units of Far East Air Forces, then inactivated as a paper unit.
Reactivated in 1952 with RB-26 Invader photo-reconnaissance aircraft; C-46 Commando transports; F-51 Mustangs. and other second-line aircraft. In 1957 reassigned to Massachusetts and re-equipped with C-119 Flying Boxcars for tactical airlift. Activated during Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; returned to reserve status after crisis was resolved. In 1966 re-equipped with C-124 Globemasters for performing strategic airlift on a worldwide scale. Reassigned to various reserve wings; flying C-123 Providers until inactivation in 1982. Reactivated in Colorado in the reserves same date and equipped with C-130 Hercules.
Read more about this topic: 731st Airlift Squadron
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“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.)
“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)
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)