43rd Airlift Wing

The 43rd Airlift Wing is an inactive United States Air Force unit last stationed at Pope Field, part of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where it was inactivated in March 2011. The wing performed en route operations support at Pope Field to include mission command & control, aircrew management, aircraft maintenance, aircraft loading, aircraft fueling and supply. Since the wing's inactivation, the 43rd Airlift Group has carried out airlift, maintenance, and base support at Pope Field.

The wing provided strategic, en-route airlift support and Lockheed C-130 Hercules tactical airlift support to the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps and 82nd Airborne Division. The wing traces its roots back to the 43rd Bombardment Group (Heavy), which was constituted 20 November 1940, and activated 15 January 1941, at Langley Field, VA. It operated primarily in the Southwest Pacific Theater as a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, and later a Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy-bomber unit assigned to Fifth Air Force. The 43rd Operations Group carries the lineage and history of its highly decorated World War II predecessor unit.

Active for over 60 years, the wing was a component wing of Strategic Air Command's deterrent force throughout the Cold War.

On 17 November 1947, the 43rd Bombardment Wing, Very Heavy was organized at Davis-Monthan Field, Arizona as part of the United States Air Force's wing base reorganization, in which combat groups and all supporting units on a base were assigned to a single wing. The 43rd Bombardment Group, flying Boeing B-29 Superfortresses became its operational component. When the wing base organization was made permanent in 1948, the wing was redesignated as the 43rd Bombardment Wing, Medium on 1 August.

On 20 February 1948, a wing crew picked up a Boeing B-50 Superfortress at the factory, and the wing became the first in SAC to fly the B-50, with regular deliveries beginning in June. However, due to maintenance and supply problems, the wing did not achieve operational capability until 1949, despite the fact that it was one of the few units in the Air Force that was authorized manning at wartime levels due to its nuclear-bombing mission. These deficiencies were demonstrated in November when the wing deployed four B-50s to Alaska. One of the planes crashed, and, the others were grounded pending the results of the aircraft investigation.

On 2 March 1949, a wing B-50A, the "Lucky Lady II", commanded by Capt. James Gallagher, completed the first nonstop, around-the-world flight. The flight departed from and ended at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas. Boeing KB-29s of the wing's 43rd Air Refueling Squadron refueled the Lucky Lady II four times on this mission. The mission received both the Mackay Trophy from the National Aeronautical Association and the Vandenberg Trophy from the Air Force Association for this mission.

The wing conducted strategic-bombardment training from 1946 to 1960, and air refueling from 1949 to 1960, to meet Strategic Air Command's (SAC) global commitments.

Replaced the propeller-driven B-29s and B-50s with new B-47E Stratojet swept-wing medium bombers in 1954, capable of flying at high subsonic speeds, primarily designed for penetrating the airspace of the Soviet Union. The 43rd set a new, jet endurance record in 1954 by keeping a B-47 airborne for 47:35 hours. Flew numerous training missions and participated in various SAC exercises and deployments with the Stratojet during the 1950s. In the late 1950s, the B-47 was considered to be reaching obsolescence, and was being phased out of SAC's strategic arsenal. The 43rd began reassigning its Stratojets to other wings as replacement aircraft beginning in 1959.