497th Air Expeditionary Group
military unit
The 497th Air Expeditionary Group is a provisional United States Air Force unit. It is assigned to Pacific Air Forces to activate or inactivate as needed.
The unit was first activated in the United States Army Air Forces as the 497th Bombardment Group which was part of Twentieth Air Force during World War II. The 497th engaged in very heavy (B-29 Superfortress) bombardment operations against Japan and earned two Distinguished Unit Citations for its combat actions. Its aircraft were identified by an "A" and a square painted on the tail.
The unit was again active as the 497th Air Refueling Wing, which was an element of Strategic Air Command. It absorbed the personnel equipment, and mission of the 4108th Air Refueling Wing at Plattsburgh Air Force Base, New York in January 1963 and was inactivated in September 1964.
In 1985 the 497th Bombardment Group and the 497th Air Refueling Wing were consolidated into a single unit. The unit was converted to provisional status and assigned to Pacific Air Forces which activated it to control exercises at Paya Lebar Airfield, Singapore various times between 2000 and 2006.
History
World War II
The unit was established in late 1943 as the 497th Bombardment Group at El Paso Army Air Base, Texas, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bombardment group. The unit's original operational squadrons were the 869th, 870th, 871st, and 872d Bombardment Squadrons.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4638763. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1964, 1985 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “497th Air Expeditionary Group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.