The 436th Operations Group is an active United States Air Force unit. It is the flying component of the Eighteenth Air Force 436th Airlift Wing, stationed at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. The unit's World War II predecessor unit, the 436th Troop Carrier Group was a C-47 Skytrain transport unit assigned to Ninth Air Force in Western Europe. The group earned the Distinguished Unit Citation for its first missions 6–7 June, the Normandy Invasion. On subsequent missions the 436th dropped troops and supplies and inserted gliders into Southern France and the Netherlands. In March 1945, the unit was a part of the Allied push across the Rhine and into Germany's heartland. Following the war, the 436th evacuated patients and prisoners of war until it was inactivated in November 1945.