27th Air Division

27th Air Division
The area of the Los Angeles Air Defense Sector (1960-6) and 27th Air Division (1966-9) was adjacent to the 26th, 30th, and 31st Air Divisions at the Four Corners
Active	1950–1959, 1966-1969
Country	United States
Branch	United States Air Force
Role	Command of air defense forces
Part of	Air Defense Command
Insignia
27th Air Division emblem (Approved 23 July 1953)

The 27th Air Division was a United States Air Force numbered air division and the geographic Air Defense Command region controlled by the 27th AD. Its last assignment was with Air Defense Command (ADC)'s Tenth Air Force, at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. It was inactivated on 19 November 1969.

Activated as the 27 Air Division (Defense) on 7 September 1950, the unit was assigned to ADC for most of its existence, the division's initial air defense area was southern California and later southern Nevada (and a small portion of Arizona by 1953).

In May 1958, the 27th AD directed a hostile intercept of a "declared unknown" aircraft (without proper IFF), but the "interceptor pilot remembered...that opening bomb bay doors was to be considered a hostile act only after declaration of an Air Defense Emergency or Warning Yellow or Red" (the SAC B-47 was on an Radar Bomb Scoring bomb run near the Los Angeles Bomb Plot.) The 27th AD was designated 1 of 23 NORAD divisions effective 10 June 1958 by NORAD General Order 6.

The "27th Air Division (Rocky Mountain)" was to transfer to the midwest with command of 2 NORAD sectors (Reno and Denver Air Defense Sectors) during deployment of SAGE. In addition to a hardened Air Defense Direction Center at Stead Air Force Base for the Reno sector; NORAD's 25 July 1958 SAGE Geographic Reorganization Plan identified the Super Combat Center/Direction Center (SCC/DC) nuclear bunker for the division was to be at Denver, Colorado (cf. the bunkers later planned for the Cheyenne Mountain Complex and in a Cripple Creek mine). The division's general area was west-to-east from the western Nevada state meridian (near the Sierra Escarpment) to the Great Plains near Oakley, Kansas; and north-south from mid-Wyoming to just south of the Four Corners latitude. Existing Permanent System radar stations in the planned Rocky Mountain Division included the Fallon, Tonopah, and Winnemucca Air Force Stations (the atomic-powered "SAGE feeder station" in the Black Hills NF became operational in 1962); and facilities and cities to be protected by the division included the Salt Lake City military installations west of the Rockies and planned Titan missile launch complexes and an Air Force Plant at the Colorado Front Range. The Reno sector was activated 15 February 1959 and the AN/FSQ-7 at Stead Air Force Base was replaced by Backup Interceptor Control (BUIC) at Fallon Naval Air Station by 1970.