The 22nd Airlift Squadron, sometimes written as 22d Airlift Squadron, is part of the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base, California. It operates C-5M Galaxy aircraft supporting the United States Air Force global reach mission worldwide. The mission is to provide services and support which promote quality of life and project global power through combat-proven airlift and airdrop.
History
World War II
The squadron's origins date to the activation of the 22d Transport Squadron at Essendon Airport near Melbourne in the southern fall of 1942. Activated in the wake of the United States withdrawal from the Philippines, the squadron was formed with a mixture of personnel withdrawn from Clark Field and some reinforcements which had arrived in Australia but did not see combat in the Philippines.
The squadron was hastily put together with some impressed civilian Douglas DC-2s and DC-3s with a mission of transporting personnel, equipment and supplies within Australia, organizing American and Australian forces against the perceived Japanese invasion of Australia.
Over the next few months the squadron was assigned additional aircraft, flying derivatives of the Lockheed C-56 and C-60 Lodestar along with a war-weary four-engine Boeing B-17D Flying Fortress withdrawn from the Philippines and a Douglas B-18 Bolo which had found its way to the South Pacific. The squadron entered combat on 5 July 1942, being redesignated the 22d Troop Carrier Squadron. It participated in a paratroop drops at Nadzab, New Guinea, in September 1942. It continued to fly combat resupply and casualty evacuation missions from Northern Australia until 11 October 1942, when it relocated closer to the fighting front to Garbutt Field, in northern Queensland, not far from Japanese-occupied New Guinea.
In November 1942 the squadron was assigned to the 374th Troop Carrier Group. The 374th was a newly arrived group from the United States equipped with new Douglas C-47 Skytrains. The mixture of aircraft the squadron was formed with were reassigned to other units. With the 374th Group the squadron continued to fly combat missions over New Guinea. On 24 January 1943, the squadron relocated from the Australian mainland to the airfield complex at Port Moresby, New Guinea.
The squadron moved to Finschhafen Airfield in August 1944 to support the Allied effort to push Japanese forces off the island. The fierce fighting in tropical and mountainous New Guinea continued until 1945. It proved to be one of the most important and difficult campaigns in the Pacific War. The 11,000 to 13,000-foot, jungle-clad Owen Stanley Range of New Guinea, known as "the Hump," was commemorated on the unit emblem, approved on 17 June 1944, and still in use to this day.
In the final month of the Pacific War, the 22d relocated to Nielson Field, Luzon, in the recently liberated Philippines, adding the larger Curtiss C-46 Commando transport plane to its veteran fleet of C-47s. When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the squadron was flying combat resupply and support missions from Nielson Field, until it was inactivated at the end of January 1946, its personnel being returned to the United States.
Postwar Service and Berlin Airlift
However, the need for intratheater transport in the Southwest Pacific led to its reactivation on 15 October 1946 as part of the postwar Thirteenth Air Force, flying C-46s from Nichols Field, Luzon as part of the 374th Troop Carrier Group. With the closure of Nichols Field, the squadron moved to Clark Field and was assigned long-range Douglas C-54 Skymasters for flights to Occupied Japan as well as other destinations in the Southwest Pacific.
In June 1948, in response to the urgent need for C-54 transports in Germany as a result of the Berlin Airlift, the squadron deployed to Wiesbaden Air Base where it flew constant missions in the Berlin Air Corridor to airports in West Berlin and back to Wiesbaden. It remained in Germany for almost a year until the end of the airlift, when it returned to the Pacific, although at Tachikawa Air Base, Japan, which was developed as a transport hub for military airlift into Occupied Japan. With its move to Tachikawa, the squadron was redesignated the 22d Troop Carrier Squadron, Heavy.