42d Troop Carrier Squadron

42d Expeditionary Airlift Squadron
C-130 Hercules from deployed units at Ramstein Air Base in 2008
Active	1942–1944; 1956–1957; 2008–2009
Country	United States
Branch	United States Air Force
Type	Airlift
Engagements	Aleutian Islands Campaign

The 42d Expeditionary Airlift Squadron is a provisional unit of the United States Air Force, assigned to United States Air Forces in Europe to activate or inactivate as needed. It was last active in 2009 at Ramstein Air Base, Germany in 2009.

The squadron was first activated at Elmendorf Field, Alaska in May 1942. The 42d transported personnel and supplies to the Aleutian Islands until February 1944.

As combat operations diminished, the squadron departed Alaska with the air echelon leaving on 11 February 1944 and the ground echelon following a week later. The squadron was reunited at Lawson Field, Georgia on 6 March to serve as a Replacement Training Unit (RTU). RTUs were oversized units which trained aircrews prior to their deployment to combat theaters. The squadron also began to participate in exercises with the parachute school at Fort Benning.

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, it adopted a more functional system in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit, while the groups and squadrons acting as RTUs were disbanded or inactivated. As a result, one month after the squadron arrived in Georgia, in April 1944, it was disbanded and its personnel and equipment were transferred to the 811th AAF Base Unit (Parachute Flight Training).

The squadron was reactivated as a "Special" troop carrier squadron at RAF Molesworth in fall 1956, when it absorbed the personnel, SA-16 and C-119F aircraft and special operations mission of the 582d Air Resupply Group. In the spring of 1957, as United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) was preparing to wind down operations at Molesworth, the squadron moved to RAF Alconbury, where it was inactivated in December.