Fifth Air Force - History

History

see main article Far East Air Force (United States)

With its origins going back almost a century to 1912, the command was officially established on 6 May 1941 as the Philippine Department Air Force at Nichols Field, Luzon, Philippines. Fifth Air Force was a United States Army Air Forces combat air force in the Pacific Theater of World War II, engaging in combat operations primarily in the Southwest Pacific AOR.

During World War II, Fifth Air Force units first engaged the Japanese during the Philippines Campaign (1941–1942), then afterward withdrawing to Australia after the Japanese conquest of the islands. Rearmed, it engaged the Japanese in New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies and then as part of the liberating forces in the Philippines Campaign (1944–45). In the postwar era, Fifth Air Force was the primary USAF occupation force in Japan. During the Korean War, Fifth Air Force was the primary command and control organization for USAF forces engaged in combat operations over Korea, and during the Cold War was the main USAF defense force in Japan.

Read more about this topic:  Fifth Air Force

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)

    the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.
    Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)

    The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.
    Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)