Active 1943–1944 Role Night Fighter Training | Country United States | |
 | ||
Branch United States Army Air Forces Type Replacement Training Unit Garrison/HQ Orlando Army Air Base, Florida
Hammer Army Airfield, California | ||
The 424th Night Fighter Squadron (424th NFS) is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with the 481st Night Fighter Operational Training Group, based at Hammer Field, California. The unit was inactivated on 31 March 1944.
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The squadron was one of the first dedicated Night Fighter Operational Training Squadron of the Air Force. It trained replacement night fighter pilots who were then deployed overseas into combat until its inactivation in March 1944 due to a re-alignment of training unit designations.
History
The squadron was activated on 24 November 1943 at Orlando Army Air Base, Florida as the fourth night fighter training squadron of the 481st Night Fighter Operational Training Group (481 NFOTG). Its mission was to be a Replacement Training Unit (RTU) for Night Fighter pilots. It accepted Army Air Forces Training Command's twin-engine flying training and B–25 transition school graduates and trained them as night fighter pilots. It was initially equipped with Douglas DB-7s and Douglas P-70s.
As 1943 progressed additional aircraft and equipment arrived and the program expanded. In September, the first American-built dedicated night fighter began to arrive, the Northrup YP-61 Black Widow and a few production P-61As. In January 1944 the entire program moved to Hammer Field, California and was placed under IV Fighter Command. The move placed the squadron near Northrop manufacturing facility at Hawthorne, California and most programmed P-61 squadrons were planned for operations in the Pacific and China Burma India Theaters.
In March 1944 the 420th was disbanded when the AAF found that standard military units, based on relatively inflexible tables of organization were proving less well adapted to the training mission. Accordingly, a more functional system was adopted in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit during a reorganization of units in the United States. The squadron's personnel and equipment were transferred to Squadron C of the 450th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Night Fighter Replacement Training Unit).