The 108th Operations Group is a unit of the 108th Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard, stationed at the McGuire AFB entity of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. If activated to federal service with the U.S. Air Force, the group is gained by Air Mobility Command. Its primary mission is air refueling, currently performed with Boeing KC-46 Pegasus tankers.
The group also commands an intelligence squadron and a contingency response squadron, and previously operated a special operations airlift squadron. Its World War II predecessor, the 348th Fighter Group, was the most successful Republic P-47 Thunderbolt group in the Southwest Pacific Theater, credited with 396 aerial victories over half of all P-47 kills credited to Fifth Air Force. Its commander, Colonel Neel E. Kearby, was awarded the Medal of Honor for single-handedly destroying six enemy aircraft in one mission over Wewak on 11 October 1943.
The group produced more than twenty flying aces and earned two Distinguished Unit Citations during the war. After converting to North American P-51 Mustangs in 1945, the group ended the war flying ground-support missions in the Philippines and strikes against targets in Japan from Ie Shima. Following World War II, the group was redesignated as the 108th Fighter Group and allotted to the New Jersey National Guard in 1946, where it has served continuously in various forms since. It was mobilized for the Korean War in 1951 and again during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. Over the decades it has transitioned through fighter, fighter-bomber, interceptor, tactical fighter, and finally air refueling missions. The group received its current designation as the 108th Operations Group in 1993 when it was equipped with Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers, transitioning to the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus in 2023.
Overview The 108th Group mission is air refueling. The wing enhances the Air Force's capability to accomplish its primary missions of Global Reach and Global Power. It also provides aerial refueling support to Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft as well as aircraft of allied nations. The wing is also capable of transporting litter and ambulatory patients using patient support pallets during aeromedical evacuations.
In addition to their primary air refueling mission, the group also supports an Intelligence Squadron and a Contingency Response Group
Units The 108th Operations Group consists of the following units: 108th Operations Support Squadron 141st Air Refueling Squadron (KC-46A) "New Jersey", Orange Fin Flash 140th Cyber Operations Squadron The 140th Cyber Operations Squadron is one of the twelve Air National Guard Cyber Protection Teams that defend networks and systems against threats. 150th Special Operations Squadron (C-32B) 170th Air Refueling Squadron (KC-46A) 204th Intelligence Squadron The 204th Intelligence Squadron is the first Air National Guard squadron that is solely dedicated to providing intelligence instruction and training products to the Air Mobility Command. It is also the first course of its kind in the intelligence community that integrates active duty, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve students.
During World War II, the group operated primarily in the Southwest Pacific Theater. It was the most successful Republic P-47 Thunderbolt unit in the Pacific War. The Group's commander, Colonel Neel Kearby ran up 20+ kills, including a 6-kills-in-1-mission, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. The Group scored 396 kills, over half of all the kills credited to Fifth Air Force P-47s, and won two United States Distinguished Unit Citations. The Group had 20 P-47 aces, including Bob Rowland, Lawrence O'Neill, Bill Banks, Bill Dunham, Walt Benz, Sam Blair, Robert Sutcliffe, and George Davis, who would later be awarded the Medal of Honor flying F-86s during the Korean War.
On 24 May 1946, the group was redesignated the 108th Fighter Group and allotted to the National Guard.
History World War II The 348th Fighter Group was activated at Mitchel Field, New York, on 30 September 1942. It was equipped with the P-47 Thunderbolt. The 348th was one of the first USAAF groups to be equipped with the P-47.
1943
After an extended period of training in the northeast United States, the personnel boarded the Army transport ship Henry Gibbons and left the wharf at Weehawken, New Jersey on 15 May 1943. The group's personnel all thought they were heading for the European theatre of war. However, they went through the Panama Canal instead and crossed the Pacific Ocean reaching Brisbane, Australia on 14 June 1943. They moved to Archer Field (Archerfield airfield) and waited for their aircraft to arrive.
The group's P-47D Thunderbolts began to arrive in Brisbane in the same month, and by the end of July after they had "run in" their engines on local training flights, the group began long-range missions to strike at Japanese targets in New Guinea. In mid-June the 348th's three squadrons (340th, 341st, 342d) made the 1,200-mile flight from Brisbane to Port Moresby, New Guinea. The group operated from New Guinea and Noemfoor until November 1944, flying patrol and reconnaissance missions and escorted bombers to targets in New Guinea and New Britain. The 460th Fighter Squadron, stationed at Noemfoor, New Guinea, was also later attached to the 348th Fighter Group on 23 September 1944 .
The arrival of the 348th as the first P-47 group in the Southwest Pacific area coincided with the opening of the Allied offensive in New Guinea. During the summer of 1943 the P-47 missions were chiefly as cover for bombers in the Lae-Salamaua area, and for transports carrying supplies to the new mountain locked airstrip at Tsili, only a few miles from the Japanese held Markham Valley. The group met its first air combat over Tsili on 16 August 1943, when two squadrons tangled with the fighter cover of an enemy bomber formation, and shot down three aircraft.
In September the 348th's planes provided cover for the paratroop landing at Nadzab in the Markham valley, and with the capture of Nadzab and Lae the group entered into one of the most spectacular phases of its overseas career, in a series of fighter sweeps, generally by flights of four planes, over the Japanese stronghold of Wewak.
Lieutenant Colonel Neel Kearby, the Commanding Officer of the 348th Fighter Group shot down his first Japanese aircraft on 4 September 1943. He shot down a second aircraft on 15 September 1943. Colonel Kearby was awarded the Medal of Honor for action over New Guinea on 11 October 1943. After leading a flight of four fighters to reconnoiter the enemy base at Wewak, Lt Col Kearby sighted a Japanese bomber formation escorted by more than 30 fighters. Despite the heavy odds and a low fuel supply, and although his mission had been accomplished, Kearby ordered an attack, personally destroying six of the enemy planes. For covering Allied landings and supporting ground forces on New Britain, 16–31 December 1943, the group was awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation.
1944 In 1944 the group began to attack airfields, installations, and shipping in western New Guinea, Ceram, and Halmahera to aid in neutralizing those areas preparatory to the US invasion of the Philippines. The group's pilots shot down 100 Japanese planes without the loss of a single pilot in aerial combat. From Finschhafen the group flew its first fighter-bomber missions. In the early spring of 1944, while the group was at Saidor, fighter-bomber work began in earnest with attacks on the Japanese concentrations in the Hansa Bay region just ahead of the advancing Australian troops
After 18 months in New Guinea the 348th boarded ship and plane for the Philippines. One squadron, the 460th, arrived several weeks before the other three, and proceeded to roll up an imposing score of enemy planes, shipping, and personnel destroyed, providing cover for convoys, flying patrols, escorted bombers, attacked enemy airfields, and supporting ground forces. During a three-week period it sank 50,000 tons of enemy shipping, which was slightly more than one-tenth of all the shipping sunk by the entire Fifth Air Force during the year 1944. On 10 November the 460th squadron deployed forward to Tacloban Airfield on Leyte, simultaneously escorting a group of B-25 bombers attacking a convoy loaded with an estimated 10,000 enemy troops en route to reinforce the Japanese army on Leyte. The squadron's planes were the first of the Army Air Force to fly over occupied Manila after the Japanese capture of the Philippines. A flight led by Colonel Dunham, made the first return flight on 17 November 1944.
The group's greatest day, in point of total of enemy planes destroyed, was 14 December 1944 when, in protection of the invasion fleet heading to Mindoro, 5 Japanese planes were shot down, an estimated 75 were destroyed and 20 more damaged, on the airfields of Negros Island only a few minutes flight from the Allied invasion force, which landed on Mindoro the following morning.
In aerial combat at the 348th's best day came on 24 December 1944 when its planes escorting B-24 Liberator heavy bombers in one of the first bomber strikes on Clark Field, met an attempted interception by an estimated 100 Japanese fighters. 32 of the enemy aircraft were definitely destroyed, 7 probably destroyed, the remainder were driven off, and the bombers proceeded undamaged to carry out their mission.
Early in December 1944, while the group's planes were operating from Taoloban strip, the majority of group personnel were camped inland near Burauen when the Japanese landed several hundred paratroops on an uncompleted airstrip less than a quarter of a mile from the group's camp, cutting the only road leading from the camp. For several days the camp was isolated between the paratroops on the East and the Japanese patrols on the West. Two men on guard post were surprised and killed by an enemy patrol, but the camp defense's prevented any breakthrough and the paratroops were finally wiped out by infantry and tanks.
When U.S. troops landed on Luzon the 348th, now in process of conversion from P-47's to North American P-51 Mustangs, began operation from San Marcelino airstrip a few days after the landing at San Marcelino and Subic Bay. From this location the unit entered upon what many of its members consider its most outstanding work of the war, bombing and strafing in close support of ground troops. This work lacks the excitement and glamor of serial combat, or even of bombing and strafing of seen targets. Bombs and bullets are poured into areas where the enemy is reported to be, and day after day the mission reports stated "Results unobserved due to foliage". Only rarely were advancing ground troops able to tell what part of the damage found was done by a particular air strike.
1945 At the time the 348th began ground support operations from San Marcelino, the infantry had taken Subic Bay and Olongapo and had started east with the objective of sealing off Bataan so that the Japanese, retreating southward from Lingayen, could not use the Bataan Peninsula's defensive strength as did the U.S. forces in 1942. However, a few miles East of Olongapo stubborn Japanese resistance suddenly had been met in Zigzag Pass, where the road climbed in a series of hairpin turns overlooked by the enemy's positions. American ground forces had suffered some casualties, had dug in, and in four days had been unable to make any appreciable gain.