The United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) is the United States Air Force component of U.S. European Command, a Department of Defense unified command, and is one of two Air Force Major Commands outside of the continental United States, the other being the Pacific Air Forces. It is, however, the only USAF Major Command to be headquartered outside of the United States.
USAFE is headquartered at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. It is the oldest continuously active USAF major command, being constituted on January 19, 1942, as the 8 Air Force by the United States Army Air Forces. The command was activated on February 1, 1942, at Langley Field, Virginia.
As of July 2012, the commander of USAFE is General Philip M. Breedlove. Lieutenant General (S) Noel T. "Tom" Jones is Vice Commander, and Chief Master Sergeant David W. Williamson is the Command Chief Master Sergeant, United States Air Forces in Europe. The command has more than 39,000 active-duty, Reserve and civilian employees assigned.
Read more about United States Air Forces In Europe: Mission
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, air, forces and/or europe:
“The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.... We must be impartial in thought as well as in action ... a nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“With steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old “central ideas” of the Republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us—God is with us. We shall again be able not to declare, that “all States as States, are equal,” nor yet that “all citizens as citizens are equal,” but to renew the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more, that “all men are created equal.””
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I moved like a lobster,
slower and slower.
The air was tiny.
The air would not do.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“I believe that the fundamental proposition is that we must recognize that the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict. We must, consequently, recognize that our interests are menaced both in Europe and in the Far East.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)