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439th Operations Group

military unit

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 26, 2025
Entity authorityQ16207073 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 439th Operations Group is an active United States Air Force Reserve unit. It is the flying component of the Twenty-Second Air Force 439th Airlift Wing, stationed at Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts.

The unit's World War II predecessor unit, the 439th Troop Carrier Group, was a C-47 Skytrain transport unit assigned to Ninth Air Force in Western Europe. During Operation Overlord, two serials of aircraft of the 439th TCG, one of 45 and the other of 36, were dispatched late in the evening of 5 June to drop the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment during the first hour of the invasion behind Utah Beach.

Difficult weather conditions and heavy anti-aircraft fire were encountered and three aircraft failed to return. A reinforcement mission with gliders was flown on the following day, with 50 C-47s towing 30 Horsa and 20 CG-4 Wacos. The 439th later received a Distinguished Unit Citation for its work during these two days.

Overview

The group operates 8 C-5M Super Galaxys, flown by the 337th Airlift Squadron. The peacetime mission includes recruiting, training, and supervision of personnel to assure mission readiness.

The 439th Operations Group can provide worldwide air movement of troops, supplies, equipment and medical patients.

Editorial summary

“439th Operations Group” enters the record as military unit. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what 439th, Operations and Group can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 199-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1943-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around 439th, Operations and Group.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“439th Operations Group” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, 439th, Operations and Group provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16207073. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “439th Operations Group”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 439th Operations Group primary sources, 439th Operations Group archive and 439th research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “439th Operations 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.