The
group's origins can be traced to 3 January 1942, when
Air Corps Ferrying Command, in the aftermath of the
attack on Pearl Harbor divided its Domestic Division into six sectors. The Nashville Sector was established at
Nashville Municipal Airport, Tennessee and was responsible for ferrying aircraft from
Vultee Aircraft factory at
Nashville and the
Curtiss-Wright Corporation factory at
St. Louis, Missouri. The bulk of this work consisted in flying new planes from the plants to modification centers in the US. On 18 February, this office was formally organized as a unit, the
Nashville Sector, Ferrying Command and Ferrying Command's Domestic Division became the
Domestic Wing, Air Corps Ferrying Command. In March 1942, the group was assigned its first operational unit, the
8th Air Corps Ferry Squadron. At this time, Ferrying Command had requested the AAF to reorganize its sectors as groups, with assigned squadrons. Accordingly, the sector became the
4th Ferrying Group on 26 May 1942. The group expanded by adding the 26th Squadron in July and the 59th in October. In December 1942, the group moved to
Memphis Municipal Airport, which was centrally located for the primary manufacturing facilities it served. At Memphis it added the 92nd and 93rd Ferrying Squadrons in early June 1943 and the 305th later in the month. By 1944, the AAF was finding that standard military units like the 4th Group, whose manning was based on relatively inflexible
tables of organization were not well adapted to support missions. Accordingly, the AAF adopted a more functional system in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit. As part of this reorganization the group was disbanded on 31 March 1944 along with its subordinate units and its resources were absorbed by the 554th Army Air Forces Base Unit (4th Ferrying Group) which was designated and organized on the same day. The base unit was redescribed as the 554th AAF Base Unit (Ferrying Group) then discontinued after the end of
World War II in March 1947. The 4th Ferrying Group was reconstituted and redesignated the
541st Tactical Airlift Group on 31 July 1985, but remained inactive. ==Lineage==