History
The Tennessee Air National Guard origins date to 27 August 1917 with the establishment of the 105th Aero Squadron as part of the World War I American Expeditionary Force. The 105th served in France on the Western Front, then after the 1918 Armistice with Germany was demobilized in 1919.
The Militia Act of 1903 established the present National Guard system, units raised by the states but paid for by the Federal Government, liable for immediate state service. If federalized by Presidential order, they fall under the regular military chain of command. On 1 June 1920, the Militia Bureau issued Circular No.1 on organization of National Guard air units.
The 105th Aero was reformed on 4 December 1921, as the 105th Observation Squadron and is oldest unit of the Tennessee Air National Guard. It is one of the 29 original National Guard Observation Squadrons of the United States Army National Guard formed before World War II. The squadron was ordered into active service on 16 September 1940 as part of the buildup of the Army Air Corps prior to the United States entry into World War II.
On 24 May 1946, the United States Army Air Forces, in response to dramatic postwar military budget cuts imposed by President Harry S. Truman, allocated inactive unit designations to the National Guard Bureau for the formation of an Air Force National Guard. These unit designations were allotted and transferred to various State National Guard bureaus to provide them unit designations to re-establish them as Air National Guard units.
The modern Tennessee ANG received federal recognition on 3 February 1947 as the 105th Fighter Squadron at Berry Field, Nashville. Also, the 155th Fighter Squadron received federal recognition on 3 February 1947 at Memphis Municipal Airport. Both squadrons were equipped with F-47 Thunderbolts and were assigned to the 118th Fighter Group at Berry Field. The mission of the 118th FG was the air defense of the state. 18 September 1947, however, is considered the Tennessee Air National Guard's official birth concurrent with the establishment of the United States Air Force as a separate branch of the United States military under the National Security Act.
On 15 December 1957, the 151st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron was allotted to the Tennessee ANG and federally recognized at the McGhee Tyson Air Force Base, Knoxville.
On 1 April 1961, the Memphis-based 155th Air Transport Squadron was expanded to a Group level, and the 164th Air Transport Group was federally recognized. On 11 July 1962, the Knoxville-based 151st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron was also expanded and the 134th Fighter-Interceptor Group was federally recognized.
Today, the Nashville-based 118th Airlift Wing (118 AW) is in a transition mode to a new mission employing MQ-9 Remote Piloted Aircraft, also known as the Reaper drone. The Memphis-based 164th Airlift Wing flies the C-5 Galaxy intercontinental airlifter around the world carrying fully equipped combat-ready military units to any point in the world on short notice and then provide field support required to help sustain the fighting force. The Knoxville-based 134th Air Refueling Wing provides worldwide aerial refueling support to Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and allied nation aircraft.
After the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, elements of every Air National Guard unit in Tennessee has been activated in support of the Global War on Terrorism. Flight crews, aircraft maintenance personnel, communications technicians, air controllers and air security personnel were engaged in Operation Noble Eagle air defense overflights of major United States cities. Also, Tennessee ANG units have been deployed overseas as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq as well as other locations as directed.
In 2012, the 118th Airlift Wing began a transition from a C-130 Hercules airlift wing to an MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance/surveillance wing.
Read more about this topic: Tennessee Air National Guard
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“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.)