385th Air Expeditionary Group

The 385th Air Expeditionary Group is a provisional United States Air Force unit assigned to Air Mobility Command to activate or inactivate as needed. It was last known to be stationed at Incirlik AB, Turkey. It is currently a tenant unit of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar.

During World War II, it was active as the 385th Bombardment Group (Heavy), an Eighth Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress unit, stationed at RAF Great Ashfield, England. The group led the famous attack on the Focke-Wulf Assembly Plant at Marienburg in East Prussia on 9 October 1943.

During the Cold War, the 385th Strategic Aerospace Wing was a Strategic Air Command (SAC) wing assigned to the 818th Strategic Aerospace Division at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. It conducted strategic air refueling operations and kept intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) ready for launch. It also supported SAC's global air refueling mission until inactivated in 1964 as part of the phaseout of the SM-65 Atlas ICBM from the USAF inventory. It was inactivated on 15 December 1964.

The unit was constituted in late November 1942 as the 385th Bombardment Group and activated on 1 December 1943 at Davis–Monthan Field in Arizona. Its initial squadrons were the 548th, 549th, 550th, and 551st Bombardment Squadrons.

The group was formed in February 1943 at Geiger Field, Washington. It trained for two months and then moved to Great Falls AAB, Montana in April 1943. The unit completed training at the end of May 1943 with the aircraft moving to Kearney Army Air Field, Nebraska prior to moving to England by the northern ferry route. Two aircraft were lost en route. The ground echelon left Great Falls on 8 June 1943. The 548th BS sailed on the Queen Mary on 23 June 1943 and the other squadrons on the Queen Elizabeth on 1 July 1943.

Under Eighth Air Force based in England, the 385th BG primarily bombed targets such as industrial areas, air bases, oil refineries, and communications centers in Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway. The group received two Distinguished Unit Citations for bombing an aircraft factory at Regensburg on 17 August 1943 after a long hazardous flight over enemy territory. The group led the 4th Bombardment Wing a great distance through heavy and damaging opposition for the successful bombardment of an aircraft repair plant at Zwickau on 12 May 1944, being awarded another DUC for this performance. Other strategic targets included aircraft factories in Oschersleben and Marienburg, battery works in Stuttgart, airfields in Beauvais and Chartres, oil refineries in Ludwigshafen and Merseburg, and marshalling yards in Munich and Oranienburg.

The 385th sometimes supported ground forces, flying interdiction missions. It attacked coastal defenses in June 1944 in preparation for the Normandy invasion and hit marshalling yards and choke points during the landing on D-Day. The group bombed enemy positions in support of ground forces at Saint-Lô in July 1944. Attacked German communications and fortifications during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944 – January 1945. It bombed troop concentrations and communications centers in Germany and France, March–April 1945, to assist the final thrust into Germany.

On 6 March 1944 raid to Berlin (the most costly mission the Eighth ever carried out) the 3d Bombardment Division commander, Brigadier General Russell Wilson, took off from Great Ashfield in a radar-equipped B-17 in a leading group of the 385th. All of the group's aircraft returned safely ... all, that is, except the one carrying General Wilson. which was seen to take several hits from flak. setting one engine on fire. Although four of the crew managed to parachute to safety (including Medal of Honor hero First Lieutenant John C. Morgan), eight of the others were killed when the bomber exploded.