127th Operations Group

The 127th Operations Group is a unit of the Michigan Air National Guard. It is stationed at Selfridge Air National Guard Base and is one of two flying groups assigned to the 127th Wing. The group operates Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack aircraft.

The group was first formed during World War II as the 361st Fighter Group. It served in the European Theater of Operations as part of VIII Fighter Command, flying its last mission on 20 April 1945.

In 1946, the group was allotted to the Air National Guard as the 127th Fighter Group. In 1951, as a result of the Korean War, the group was called to active duty, and trained pilots for the United States Air Force as the 127th Pilot Training Group. In November 1952, it was returned to the Michigan Air National Guard as the 127th Fighter-Bomber Group. in 1955, it became the 127th Fighter-Interceptor Group and in 1958 converted to the aerial reconnaissance mission as the 127th Tactical Reconnaissance Group. It resumed the fighter mission in 1972 as the 127th Tactical Fighter Group, but was inactivated two years later. With the implementation of the Objective Wing organization, the group was again activated as the 127th Operations Group.

The group was first organized at Richmond Army Air Base, Virginia on 10 February 1943. Its components were the 374th, 375th, and 376th Fighter Squadrons. The group was equipped with Republic P-47 Thunderbolts and trained for combat at bases in Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey. On 12 November 1943, the group moved to Camp Shanks, New York for shipment overseas. It sailed on the RMS Queen Elizabeth for the European Theater of Operations on 23 November.

The group arrived at the Firth of Clyde on 29 November and moved to RAF Bottisham, England the following day. It would be the last P-47 Thunderbolt group to join Eighth Air Force. The 361st flew its first combat mission with its P-47 aircraft on 21 January 1944. The weight of the heavy P-47 fighters soon began to tell on the wet surface making take-offs tricky. A team of American engineers were called in during January 1944 and, in three days, they constructed a 4410 foot long runway with pierced steel planking (PSP). This feat was considered a record for laying this type of prefabricated surfacing. The runway, which was aligned NE-SW, became the main at Bottisham the other also being constructed of PSP.^{[citation needed]} However, the group converted to North American P-51 Mustangs in May 1944 and flew them for the remainder of the war.

The unit served primarily as an escort organization, covering the penetration, attack, and withdrawal of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber formations that the Army Air Forces sent against targets on the Continent. The group also engaged in counter-air patrols, fighter sweeps, and strafing and dive bombing missions. Attacked such targets as airdromes, marshaling yards, industrial areas, ordnance depots, oil refineries, trains, and highways. It participated in Operation Crossbow, the attacks on German missile launch sites.

During its operations, the unit participated in the assault against the German Air Force and aircraft industry during the Big Week, 20–25 February 1944, and the attack on transportation facilities prior to D-Day and support of the invasion forces thereafter, including Operation Cobra, the breakout at Saint Lo, in July. In September 1944, the 361st moved to RAF Little Walden.

From its new base, the group supported Operation Market-Garden, the airborne attack on Rhine River crossings in the Netherlands in September 1944. In December 1944, the group deployed a detachment to France to support ground troops in the Battle of the Bulge. The detachment remained until January 1945. In February, the entire group deployed to Chievres Airfield, Belgium, flying tactical ground support missions during Operation Varsity, the airborne assault across the Rhine in Germany and remained until April.