Activated at Selfridge Field, Michigan, on January 16, 1941, elements of the 49th Fighter Group and their P-40 Warhawks arrived at Darwin, Australia, in March 1942, becoming the first Army Air Corps pursuit unit dispatched to the South Pacific Theater after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Under 5th Air Force commander Gen. George C. Kenney, the group flew its first combat mission on March 14, 1942, later transitioning to Lockheed P-38 Lightnings. It flew 41 months of combat from fighter strips stretching from Australia to the Philippines, and the Fighting 49ers destroyed 678 enemy aircraft in aerial combat; their last World War II mission was flown on August 16, 1945. Major Richard Bong, a member of the 49th, became America’s Ace of Aces with 40 air victories and, as a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, was the first to break Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I record of 26 enemy planes destroyed. The 49th later flew F-80 and F-84 aircraft in combat in Korea and saw action in Vietnam flying the F-4 Phantom. Now known as the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing, the unit is based at Holloman AFB, N.M., under the command of B/Gen. Dennis Larsen, flying the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter.