Twentieth Air Force

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

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