Twentieth Air Force
The Twentieth Air Force (20 AF) is a numbered air force of the United States Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). It is headquartered at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming.
20 AF's primary mission is Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) operations. The Twentieth Air Force commander is also the Commander, Task Force 214 (TF 214), which provides alert ICBMs to the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM).
Established on 4 April 1944 at Washington D.C, 20 AF was a United States Army Air Forces combat air force deployed to the Pacific Theater of World War II. Operating initially from bases in India and staging though bases in China, 20 AF conducted strategic bombardment of the Japanese Home Islands. It relocated to the Mariana Islands in late 1944, and continued the strategic bombardment campaign against Japan until the Japanese Capitulation in August 1945. The 20 AF 509th Composite Group conducted the Atomic Bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945.
Inactivated on 1 March 1955, the command was reactivated 1 September 1991, as a component of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and became operationally responsible for all land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.
20 AF is commanded by Maj Gen Michael J. Carey.
Read more about Twentieth Air Force: Overview, Organization, History
Famous quotes containing the words twentieth, air and/or force:
“If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley’s footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Only the gaunt fierce bird
Flies, merciless with fear
Lest air hold him not,
Beats up the scaffold of space
Sick of the world’s rot
God’s hideous face.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is being used by personally minded men for purposes which you recognize to be base.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)