Continental Air Forces

Continental Air Forces (CAF) was a United States Army Air Forces major command at the end of World War II and during the early Cold War for combat training of bomber and fighter personnel and for Continental United States (CONUS) air defense after the Aircraft Warning Corps and Ground Observer Corps were placed in standby during 1944. CAF conducted planning for the postwar United States general surveillance radar stations, and the planning to reorganize to a separate USAF was for CAF to become the USAF Air Defense Command (ADC was headquartered at CAF's Mitchel Field instead of the CAF HQ at Bolling Field.) On 21 March 1946, CAF headquarters personnel and facilities at Bolling Field, along with 1 of the 4 CAF Air Forces (2nd—which had its HQ inactivated on 30 March) became Strategic Air Command. US Strategic Air Forces of WWII, e.g., Eighth Air Force and Fifteenth Air Force, transferred later to SAC. Most of the CAF airfields that had not been distributed to other commands when SAC activated were subsequently transferred to Air Defense Command (to which CAF's 1st & 4th Air Forces were assigned on 21 March), Tactical Air Command (3rd Air Force), and Air Materiel Command from 23 March 1946 to 16 March 1947 before the USAF was activated in September 1947.