The 461st Bombardment Squadron is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with 346th Bombardment Group at Kadena Airfield, Okinawa, where it was inactivated on 30 June 1946. From 1942 the squadron served as a Replacement Training Unit for heavy bomber aircrews. It was inactivated in the spring of 1944 in a general reorganization of Army Air Forces training units. The squadron was activated again in 1944 as a Boeing B-29 Superfortress unit. Although it deployed to the Pacific, it arrived too late to see combat service.
However, the Army Air Forces found that standard military units, based on relatively inflexible tables of organization, were not proving to be well adapted to the training mission, particularly to replacement training. Accordingly, it adopted a more functional system in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit,[4] while the groups and squadrons acting as replacement training units were disbanded or inactivated.[5] This resulted in the 462d, along with other units at Casper, being inactivated in the spring of 1944 and being replaced by the 211th AAF Base Unit (Combat Crew Training Station, Heavy),[6] which assumed the 331st Group's mission, personnel, and equipment along with supporting units at Casper, which were disbanded or inactivated.[1][7]
The squadron flew several show of force missions from Okinawa over Japan following VJ Day. It also evacuated prisoners of war from camps in Japan to the Philippines. The squadron was inactivated on Okinawa in June 1946.[1][10]
Lineage
Constituted as the 461st Bombardment Squadron (Heavy) on 1 July 1942
Activated on 6 July 1942
Inactivated on 1 April 1944
Redesignated 461st Bombardment Squadron, Very Heavy on 4 August 1944
^Approved 13 January 1943. Description: On a light blue disc, a caricatured tan elephant seated on a white cloud formation, wearing sombrero, boots and pistol case red, goggles white, hurling red aerial bombs through an open ring in the clouds with right forepaw and reaching for reserve supply resting on cloud base with left forepaw, twirling red revolver in trunk.
^Aircraft is Ford Motors built Consolidated B-24H-10-FO Liberator, serial 42-52161. It later deployed to Europe and was shot down on 22 February 1944. Missing Aircrew Report 2832.
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, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. LCCN48003657. OCLC704158. Retrieved 17 December 2016.