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- The 319th Operations Group is a United States Air Force unit assigned to 319th Reconnaissance Wing Air Combat Command. It is stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota operating RQ-4 Global Hawk remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) in the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) role. The group was first activated during World War II as the 319th Bombardment Group, the first Martin B-26 Marauder group in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) during the war. The group received two Distinguished Unit Citations during the war. In 1945, the group was re-equipped with the North American B-25 Mitchell in combat in the MTO before returning to the US to transition to the Douglas A-26 Invader. After retraining the group deployed to Okinawa, where it flew combat missions over China as part of Seventh Air Force against Imperial Japanese forces until the war's end. One of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, Deke Slayton, flew A-26s from Okinawa as a part of the group's 438th Bombardment Squadron in 1945. The group was reactivated in the reserve in December 1946. It does not appear to have been fully manned or equipped, and when mobilized in 1951 for the Korean War, its personnel were used to man other units and the group was inactivated. It again became part of the reserve force in 1955 as the 319th Fighter-Bomber Group, but was inactivated in 1957, when the reserves converted to the troop carrier mission. It remained inactive until 1991. In 2019 the group was reactivated at Grand Forks Air Force Base as the Operations Group in charge of all active duty RQ-4 Global Hawk operations. (en)
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