World War II The first predecessor of the
squadron was activated in February 1942 as the
138th Signal Intelligence Company at
Fort George Wright, Washington. It received it initial
cadre on 25 February drawing from the 404th Signal Company, Aviation; 434th Signal Maintenance Company, Aviation and 39th Signal Platoon, Air Base. However, it was April before a substantial number of people were assigned to the company. The company continued training at Fort Wright until May 1943, when they departed for shipment to the Southwest Pacific, Staging through
Fort Dix, New Jersey. On 13 May, the company boarded the for a monthlong shipment through the
Panama Canal to
Brisbane, Australia. In August 1942, the squadron moved forward to
Port Moresby, New Guinea to begin operations. The squadron continued radio intercept operations of Japanese radio transmissions until
VJ Day. Following the war, the unit was transferred from the
Army Signal Corps to the
Air Corps and redesignated the
1st Radio Squadron. However, it remained part of
Army Security Agency for more than a year after the
United States Air Force became independent, not transferring to
United States Air Force Security Service until 1 February 1949.
Korean War The squadron remained in Japan after the war with the mission of monitoring Soviet air and
air defense signals. When the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel and invaded in June 1950, the squadron's commander ordered its vehicles to be
laagered on the
Johnson Air Base football field in case of a parachute attack on Japan. A detachment of the squadron moved to Korea on 15 July 1950. However
Fifth Air Force had established its own
ad hoc signals intelligence party near
Seoul, which commandeered the 1st Squadron's equipment. However, additional mobile radio intercept detachments began arriving before the end of the year. In March 1951, squadron operators in Japan began picking up voice communications in Russian between ground controllers and
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighters. By April, the squadron had established a mobile van in central Korea, which passed information on MiGs to the Fifth Air Force tactical air control center, which passed it on to American
North American F-86 Sabres, disguising the information to make it appear that it was coming from radar ground stations, even though the radio intercept van could provide warning of Soviet aircraft movements well beyond the range of American radars. Separate stations were established for intercepting enemy
morse code signals dealing with both enemy and friendly traffic. After September 1951, these operations were consolidated in Seoul. The information provided by squadron operators has been credited as the major factor in the increased kill ratio of Sabre pilots over the MiG-15 in Korea starting in mid-1951, especially in view of analysis that indicated that by the fall of 1952 90% of MiG pilots in Korea were Russians. In January 1951, the squadron moved to Misawa Air Base, Japan, where one of the first
Elephant Cage high frequency
direction finding antenna assemblies was located. The squadron was inactivated in May 1955,
301st Intelligence Squadron In October 1993, the 1st Radio Squadron (which had been disbanded in 1985), was reconstituted and consolidated with the 6920th Group and the consolidated squadron was named the
301st Intelligence Squadron. After the massive
tsunami and devastating earthquake measuring 9.0 on the
Richter Scale struck the coast of Japan in 2011, Airmen of the 301st devoted countless hours alongside other Americans and Japanese during Operation Tomodachi by assisting with clean-up and restoration efforts throughout Japan. In June 2014, as the Misawa operations center closed and intelligence personnel there were reduced by more than 500 people, the squadron moved from Misawa to
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson when the intelligence center at Misawa closed. ==Lineage==