633d Special Operations Wing emblem (approved 29 May 1969)[1]
Military unit
The 333d Special Operations Wing is an inactive United States Air Force unit. It was active from July 1968 through March 1970 at Pleiku Air Base, South Vietnam. In 1985, the wing was consolidated with the 333d Bombardment Group as the 333d Special Operations Wing.
The OTU program involved the use of an oversized parent unit to provide cadres to "satellite groups". In February 1943 it moved to Dalhart Army Air Field, Texas, and shifted its mission to become a Replacement Training Unit (RTU). RTUs were also oversized units, but trained individual pilots or aircrews for shipment to theaters of operation.[2][4] However, the Army Air Forces found that standard military units like the 333d, based on relatively inflexible tables of organization, were not proving well adapted to the training mission. Accordingly a more functional system was adopted in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit.[5] As a result, the group was inactivated and training activities at Dalhart were assumed by the 232d (bomber) and 268th (fighter) AAF Base Units.
Very heavy bomber operations
B-29 Superfortress as flown by the group
Dalhart became a center for organizing Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bombardment groups and the 333d was again activated there in July 1944.[2] However, its original squadrons were not activated along with it. Instead, the 435th, 460th, and 507th Bombardment Squadrons were assigned. These three squadrons had previously been the "fourth" (highest numbered) squadrons in groups that also flew B-29s. The three squadrons had been inactivated in May 1944, when B-29 groups were reorganized to have three, rather than four squadrons.[6] The 435th had seen combat in the Southwest Pacific Theater early in the war.[7]
In January 1945 the group moved to Great Bend Army Air Field, Kansas, where it continued its training until June 1945. The group deployed to Okinawa as part of Eighth Air Force in the Pacific Theater. It arrived in Okinawa, but the end of the war with the defeat of Japan led to a drawdown of Eighth Air Force and the group never engaged in combat. The group helped evacuate prisoners of war from Japan to airfields in the Philippines. The unit was inactivated on Okinawa on 28 May 1946.[2]
In November 1969 its only operational squadron was inactivated in Operation Keystone Cardinal, the first reduction in United States Air Forces combat forces as ceilings on forces in South Vietnam were reduced and the United States began to withdraw. Its Douglas A-1 Skyraiders were transferred to the 56th Special Operations Wing in Thailand.[11] The wing managed the reduction of United States forces at Pleiku until March 1970, when it was inactivated and transferred its remaining equipment and personnel to the 6254th Air Base Squadron.
Consolidation and redesignation
In July 1985, the wing was consolidated with the 333d Bombardment Group, a World War II unit that also served in the Pacific area. The consolidated unit was designated the 333d Special Operations Wing, but has never been active under that designation.[12]
Lineage
333d Bombardment Group
Constituted as the 333d Bombardment Group (Heavy) on 9 July 1942
^ abcDepartment of the Air Force/MPM Letter 648q, 31 July 1985, Subject: Reconstitution, Redesignation, and Consolidation of Selected Air Force Organizations
Goss, William A. (1955). "The Organization and its Responsibilities, Chapter 2 The AAF". In Craven, Wesley F.; Cate, James L. (eds.). The Army Air Forces in World War II(PDF). Vol. VI, Men & Planes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. LCCN48003657. OCLC704158. Retrieved 17 December 2016.
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