Active 1942-1964 Type Bombardment | Country United States | |
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Branch United States Air Force | ||
The 546th Bombardment Squadron is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last was assigned to the 384th Bombardment Wing, stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. It was inactivated on 1 September 1964.
Contents
History
Established as a B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber squadron; trained under Second Air Force. Deployed to European Theater of Operations (ETO), assigned to VIII Bomber Command in England, Flew combat missions over Nazi Germany and Occupied Europe until the German capitulation in May 1945.
Reassigned to Air Transport Command and used B-17s as transports for demobilized personnel. Flew transport routes to French Morocco and Azores; returning to Istes France. Squadron inactivated in France during February 1946.
Activated as a B-29 Superfortress squadron in the reserves, 1947. Not manned or equipped, inactivated in 1949 due to budget reductions.
Reactivated in August 1955 as a Strategic Air Command B-47 Stratojet squadron which were designed to carry nuclear weapons and to penetrate Soviet air defenses with its high operational ceiling and near supersonic speed. The squadron flew the B-47 for about a decade when by the mid-1960s it had become obsolescent and vulnerable to new Soviet air defenses. Inactivated with the phaseout of the B-47; sending aircraft to storage at Davis-Monthan in the late summer of 1964 and the squadron was inactivated.