514th Flight Test Squadron
military unit
The 514th Flight Test Squadron is a squadron of the United States Air Force, which has been stationed at Hill Air Force Base, Utah since 1973, performing functional flight checks on aircraft undergoing major maintenance.
The first predecessor of the squadron was formed as the 514th Bombardment Squadron in the Middle East in 1942 to reinforce the Royal Air Force in North Africa with personnel and aircraft diverted from delivery to the China Burma India Theater. The squadron moved forward, eventually being stationed in Italy, where it participated in the strategic bombing campaign against Germany, and was awarded three Distinguished Unit Citations for its combat actions. Following V-E Day, the squadron returned to the United States, where it converted to Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers, but was inactivated in March 1946.
The squadron was redesignated the 514th Reconnaissance Squadron and activated in 1947 as a weather reconnaissance unit. It continued the reconnaissance mission until February 1951, when it was inactivated and its assets transferred to another squadron. The squadron returned to the bombardment mission later that year, and upgraded to jet Boeing B-47 Stratojet bombers in 1954. It continued to fly the Stratojet until they were phased out of the Air Force inventory, and the squadron was inactivated in 1965.
The squadron's second predecessor was organized as the 6514th Test Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base in 1970 to test unmanned aerial vehicles. It moved to Hill in 1973 and assumed its current mission.
“514th Flight Test Squadron” enters the record as military unit. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what 514th, Flight and Test can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “514th Flight Test 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.