Heavy bomber training unit The
group was first activated at
Salt Lake City Army Air Base in November 1942, with the
540th,
541st,
542d and 543d Bombardment Squadrons assigned. Its
cadre moved to
Rapid City Army Air Base a little over a week later, where it began to equip as a
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Operational Training Unit (OTU) the following year. OTUs were oversized parent units that provided cadres to "satellite groups" In October 1943, the group moved to
Peterson Field, Colorado, where it flew
Consolidated B-24 Liberator and changed its mission to become a
Replacement Training Unit (RTU). Like OTUs, RTUs were oversized units, but their mission was to train individual
aircrews. As a result, the 383d Group, its elements and supporting units were inactivated or disbanded and replaced by the 214th AAF Base Unit (Combat Crew Training School, Heavy), which was simultaneously organized at Peterson.
B-29 operations However, the unit was reactivated on 28 August as the
383d Bombardment Group, Very Heavy and programmed as a
Boeing B-29 Superfortress group for the
Pacific Theater at
Dalhart Army Air Field, Texas. Shortages of B-29s for training caused the group to remain in the United States for almost a year until finally it deployed to
Okinawa in August 1945 to be part of
Eighth Air Force in the Pacific. However, the war ended before the group could enter combat. The group was reassigned to
Twentieth Air Force in September 1945, the group flew a few training missions from Okinawa until being returned to the United States for demobilization in December. The 383d Bomb Group was inactivated on 3 January 1946. ==Lineage==