World War II Initial activation and training in the United States The
861st Bombardment Squadron, the first predecessor of the squadron, was first activated at
McCook Army Air Field, Nebraska as one of the original four squadrons of the
493d Bombardment Group. The formation of the squadron was delayed by an administrative error that caused some of the unit's
cadre to report to
Davis-Monthan Field, Arizona instead of McCook. It was not until January that all personnel were at McCook. By this time, the squadron had transferred on paper to
Elveden Hall, England. The ground personnel of the squadron in the United States had been used to form
Boeing B-29 Superfortress units being activated by
Second Air Force, while the air echelon remained in Nebraska to conduct training on their assigned
Consolidated B-24 Liberators. Meanwhile,
Eighth Air Force formed a new ground echelon for the squadron in England from other units assigned to the
3d Bombardment Division. This ground echelon moved to the squadron's combat station,
RAF Debach, in April 1944. The squadron's air echelon departed for England via the northern ferry route on 1 May, while a small ground component left McCook and sailed from
Boston, Massachusetts on the on 12 May 1944. The squadron's second predecessor,
361st Reconnaissance Squadron, was organized at
Nha Trang Air Base, South Vietnam in April 1966, flying RC-47 aircraft equipped for ARDF. Detachment 1 of the 6994th Security Squadron operated the planes' direction finding equipment. In July 1966, Detachment 1 of the squadron was established at
Pleiku Air Base, although its first "Electric Goony" did not arrive until December. In late February 1968, a squadron aircraft returning to base from a mission picked up signals coming from the South China Sea. ARDF fixes were made on three of the four transmitters, which were trawlers transporting arms to the Viet Cong. The locations were transmitted to the
Navy's Operation Market Time blockading force, which sank one trawler and forced the other two aground in "one of the most significant victories" of the operation. Operations over Laos became increasingly dangerous with the increase in
air defenses there. In March 1968, a squadron aircraft, Brew 41, operating in the
Steel Tiger area was hit by 37mm fire. The pilot was able to crash land the plane on an abandoned Special Forces camp across the border in South Vietnam. The squadron moved to Thailand in 1972 as part of the USAF drawdown in South Vietnam. It continued missions over Indochina until 15 August 1973 when United States military flights over Indochina were halted by congressional mandate. The squadron trained in Thailand until its inactivation on 30 June 1974.
War on terrorism The squadron reactivated as the
361st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron as part of the
war on terrorism in 2003. Assigned to first the
407th Air Expeditionary Group, then later the
451st Air Expeditionary Group, the squadron operated a variety of surveillance & reconnaissance aircraft before the United States withdrew from
Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2014. ==Lineage==