331st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron

331st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron
331st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron Lockheed F-104 Starfighter 56-821 at Webb AFB, Texas February 1964
Active	1942–1967
Country	United States
Branch	United States Air Force
Insignia
Patch showing 331st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron Emblem

The 331st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with Air Defense Command at Webb Air Force Base, Texas, where it was inactivated on 1 March 1967.

During World War II the squadron was a Lockheed P-38 Lightning replacement training unit on the west coast of the United States. It performed this mission until it was disbanded in 1944 in a major reorganization of Army Air Forces training and support units.

The squadron was reactivated in 1953 as part of the expansion on air defenses and served in this role from bases in New York until 1958, when it moved to Texas. In Texas it assumed the additional mission of combat crew training for Lockheed F-104 Starfighter pilots.

The squadron was first activated in 1942 as the 331st Fighter Squadron, one of the three original squadrons of the 329th Fighter Group. The squadron served under IV Fighter Command as a Lockheed P-38 Lightning Replacement Training Unit. Replacement training units were oversized units which trained aircrews prior to their deployment to combat theaters. It trained P-38 pilots in California and Washington State. However, the Army Air Forces found that standard military units, based on relatively inflexible tables of organization were proving less well adapted to the training mission. Accordingly, a more functional system was adopted in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit. This resulted in the 331st, along with other units at Ellensburg Army Airfield, being disbanded in the spring of 1944 and replaced by an Army Air Forces Base Unit.