IX Air Force Service Command

European Air Materiel Command
Temporary hangars at an advanced air depot in France
Active	1942–1947
Country	United States
Branch	United States Army Air Forces
Role	Logistics support
Size	62,000 at peak
Part of	United States Air Forces Europe
Engagements	European Theater of Operations
Disbanded	8 October 1948
Aircraft flown
Transport	Douglas C-47 Skytrain

The European Air Materiel Command was a support organization of the United States Army Air Forces.

In November 1942, Lt. Gen. Frank M. Andrews assumed command of U.S. Army Forces in the Middle East (USAFIME) in Egypt, replacing Maxwell. Andrews was an experienced airman, and one of his first acts was to establish the Ninth Air Force to replace USAMEAF. Brereton assumed command of the new organization and established the IX Air Service Command, which joined the IX Bomber Command and the IX Fighter Command as the major subordinate headquarters.

IX Air Service Command was changed to IX Air Force Service Command (IX AFSC) by an unnumbered Ninth Air Force Memorandum of 29 January 1944.

IX Air Force Service Command was more clearly patterned after its Eighth Air Force opposite number than any of the other Ninth Air Force commands. A number of officers and enlisted men had been brought to England from Egypt, but most of the key members of the headquarters came from the Eighth Air Force. General Miller, for most of the past year the commander of the VIII AFSC, took over the IX AFSC in October 1943 and brought with him members of his former staff. From the Tactical Air Depot Area came additional officers and men to round out a headquarters staff rich in experience. On 5 May, Brig. Gen. Myron R. Wood succeeded General Miller as commander of the IX AFSC. In mid-November, the service command headquarters moved into newly constructed quarters across from the Ascot race course, adjacent to the Ninth Air Force headquarters at Sunninghill Park.

The projected size of the Ninth Air Force and the scope of its operations clearly required a large and mobile service command. The service command, in turn, recognized early that its own size and wide-flung operations made decentralization of its organization desirable. Accordingly, borrowing from the experience of VIII AFSC, in October it set up a base air depot area (BADA) and an advanced air depot area (AADA) which were areas in terms of function rather than geography. The base air depot area was intended primarily for supply and aircraft assembly functions. For a time, BADA was located at Constitution Hill, Sudbury, in Suffolk. In December the IX AFSC divided the advanced air depot area into a 1st and 2d AADA. This further decentralization of the command was purportedly in preparation for the move to the continent, where mobile warfare would require decentralized operations. In addition, the two headquarters could be, and were, of value in organizing and training the many service units formed in the United Kingdom by the IX AFSC.