44th Fighter Squadron
military unit
The 44th Fighter Squadron is a unit of the United States Air Force, part of the 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The 44th Pursuit Squadron was activated on 1 January 1941 and assigned to the 18th Pursuit Group. The 44th Fighter Squadron was equipped with the F-15C/D Eagle, and is planned to transition to the F-15EX Eagle II in 2026.
Mission
The 44 FS operated the F-15C Eagle aircraft conducting air superiority missions.
History
World War II
The 44th Flew patrols over the Pacific from Hawaii from 7 December 1941 – October 1942. It went on to fly combat missions in the South and Southwest Pacific from 21 December 1942 – 15 August 1945.
Vietnam War
It again flew combat missions in Southeast Asia from 18 December 1964 – 25 February 1965, 21 April – 22 June 1965, 19 – 29 October 1965, and 25 April 1967 – 6 October 1970.
The squadron was unmanned from 31 December 1966 – 24 April 1967 and November 1970–15 May 1971.
Japan
It has flown air defense over Okinawa and Japan since 1971.
On 17 January 2006 an F-15C of the squadron crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Okinawa.
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This entry incorporates text from “44th Fighter Squadron” 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.