The Second Air Force is a numbered air force of the United States Air Force. It is currently part of the Air Education and Training Command (AETC). It is headquartered at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi. It is responsible for conducting basic military and technical training for Air Force enlisted members and support officers.
One of the four original pre–Second World War numbered air forces, Second Air Force was activated on 19 October 1940, at McChord Field, Washington with a mission of air defense of the Northwestern United States and Upper Midwest regions. During the war, its primary mission became the organization and training of combat units prior to their deployment to the overseas combat air forces.
During the Cold War, it was one of the five Numbered Air Forces of Strategic Air Command (SAC), commanding USAF strategic bombers and missiles on a global scale. Elements of Second Air Force engaged in combat operations during the Korean War; Vietnam War, as well as Operation Desert Storm.
Read more about Second Air Force: History
Famous quotes containing the words air and/or force:
“Now Air is hush’d, save where the weak-ey’d Bat,
With short shrill Shriek flits by on leathern Wing,
Or where the Beetle winds
His small but sullen Horn,”
—William Collins (1721–1759)
“In the capsule biography by which most of the people knew one another, I was understood to be an Air Force pilot whose family was wealthy and lived in the East, and I even added the detail that I had a broken marriage and drank to get over it.... I sometimes believed what I said and tried to take the cure in the very real sun of Desert D’Or with its cactus, its mountain, and the bright green foliage of its love and its money.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)