19th Air Division | |
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Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker refueling a B-52D Stratofortress LGM-25C Titan II in its launch silo. During the 1970s and 1980s the 19th Air Division controlled two ICBM Wings |
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Active | 1929–1941; 1942–1945; 1946–1949; 1951–1988 |
Country | United States |
Branch | United States Air Force |
Role | Command of strategic strike forces |
Equipment | see "Aircraft / Missiles" section below |
Insignia | |
19th Air Division emblem (approved 11 May 1959) |
The 19th Air Division is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with Eighth Air Force at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas, where it was inactivated on 30 September 1988.
During World War II, the unit was designated as IX Bomber Command and was the command and control organization for Ninth Air Force in the Western Desert Campaign. Using predominantly B-24 Liberator heavy and B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, it supported the British Eighth Army against the German Afrika Korps from airfields ranging from Palestine in 1942 across North Africa to the final defeat of German forces in the Tunisia Campaign in May 1943.
Later, during the 1944 Battle of Normandy and the 1945 Western Allied invasion of Germany, as the 9th Bombardment Division, the unit directed B-26 Marauder medium bombers in tactical roles supporting Allied ground forces from D-Day to V-E Day.
Azure, surmounting a lightning flash gules, a globe argent with latitude and longitude lines dark blue and encircled with a planetary ring of the last strewn with stars of the third and fimbriated of the like all bandwise, in chief an olive branch fesswise or, all within a diminished border of the third. (Approved 11 March 1959.)
The 19th Air Division was first organized on 30 June 1929 as the 19th Composite Wing at France Field, Canal Zone. It was a consolidation of Air Corps units in the Canal Zone, and was activated on 1 April 1931. It consisted of the following units: