Origin of USAF wings

In United States Air Force usage, a military organization above a squadron level (group, wing, division, command, air force) is an establishment, while that of a squadron and lower (squadron, flight, detachment) is a unit.

"The U.S. Army Air Service/U.S. Army Air Corps/U.S. Army Air Forces wings that existed before 1947 are not comparable with the wings of the USAF. World War II wings, for example, were very large administrative and operational organizations that usually controlled several combat groups and numerous service organizations, often located at widely scattered locations. Many of the World War II wings were redesignated as air divisions after the war. Modern wings, as we know them, began their existence with a service test of combat wings in 1947-1948. These wings were temporary Table of Distribution (T/D) organizations, each having a combat group (the only Table of Organization establishment of the wings), an airdrome group, a maintenance and supply group, and a station medical group. In 1948, at the end of the service test, HQ USAF replaced these T/D wings with permanent TO&E (constituted) combat wings having a combat group, an air base group, maintenance and supply group, and a medical group.

"Constituted combat wings are always numbered in a single series beginning with Arabic “1st.” Examples: 1st Fighter Wing, 21st Space Wing, and the Strategic Air Command's 509th Bomb Wing. All constituted wings have one, two, or three digits in their numerical designations.

"In many cases, the numerical designation of the wing came from the combat group that preceded it and became an integral part of the post-World War II wing. In other words, when the 14th Fighter Wing (later, 14th Flying Training Wing) came into existence, it received the 14th numerical designation from the 14th Fighter Group which had already existed for a number of years and which became the wing’s combat component. At the same time, the other component establishments, and units of these establishments, also received the 14th numerical designations, aligning each of them directly to the 14th Wing. The tactical squadrons of the combat group, however, retained their separate and distinct numerical designations.

"The Air Force has three basic types of wings: operational, air base, and specialized mission. According to Air Force Instruction 38-101 (1994):

• an operational wing is a wing that has an operations group and related operational mission activity assigned to it. When an operational wing performs the primary mission of the base, it usually maintains and operates the base. In addition, an operational wing is capable of self-support in functional areas like maintenance, supply, and munitions, as needed. When an operational wing is a tenant organization, the host command provides it with varying degrees of base and logistics support.

• An air base wing usually maintains and operates a base, and often provides functional support to a major command headquarters.

• A specialized mission wing may be either a host wing or a tenant wing and performs a specialized mission such as intelligence or training."

A typical organization chart for a Strategic Air Command bomb wing in the 1950s and 1960s:

Reference: STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND An Organizational History, The Battermix Publishing Company approved the reproduction of this article.

Source

United States Air Force portal

• AF Historical Research Agency organization descriptions

(This origin of USAF wings is provided by the Organizational History Branch, Research Division, Air Force Historical Research Agency, located with the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, to explain the "Wing" structure of the United States Air Force.)