page_title: 6th Air Refueling Squadron
section_title: Antisubmarine Warfare and Heavy Bomber Training
hierarchical_section_title: 6th Air Refueling Squadron / History / World War II / Antisubmarine Warfare and Heavy Bomber Training
caption_attribution_description: English: 411th Bombardment Squadron B-24E Liberator, taxiing, Gowen Field, Idaho, 1944
context_page_description: The 6th Air Refueling Squadron is part of the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base, California. It operates the McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender aircraft conducting mobility, and air refueling missions.
  The 6th Air Refueling Squadron was awarded the SMSGT Albert L. Evans Trophy for Outstanding Air Refueling Section of the Year in 2017. This distinction has been awarded to the 6th Air Refueling Squadron a record number of 6 times since 1989 -twice that of the 9th Air Refueling Squadron, the next most awarded unit.
context_section_description: The squadron was first activated at Langley Field, Virginia, as the 6th Bombardment Squadron in January 1940, one of the original squadrons of the 29th Bombardment Group.   Its organization was part of the pre-World War II buildup of the United States Army Air Corps after the breakout of war in Europe.  In May, it moved to MacDill Field, Florida, where it was equipped with a mix of pre-production YB-17s and early model Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and Douglas B-18 Bolos. The squadron was still at MacDill when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and it began to fly antisubmarine patrol missions in the Gulf of Mexico from January 1942.  By the summer of 1942, the U-boat threat in the Gulf began to diminish, with all German submarines being withdrawn from the area by September.
  No longer needed in the Gulf, the squadron moved to Gowen Field, Idaho, where it became an Operational Training Unit (OTU)  The OTU program involved the use of an oversized parent unit to provide cadres to "satellite groups". The 96th, 381st, 384th and 388th Bombardment Groups were all formed at Gowen in the second half of 1942.
  In 1943, the squadron exchanged its B-17s for Consolidated B-24 Liberators.  The squadron mission also changed as the Army Air Forces' (AAF) need for new units diminished and its need for replacements increased.  The squadron became a Replacement Training Unit (RTU).  Like OTUs, RTUs were oversized units, but their mission was to train individual pilots and aircrews.  However, standard military units, like the 6th Squadron, were based on relatively inflexible tables of organization, and were not proving well adapted to the training mission.  Accordingly, a more functional system was adopted in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit.  The 29th Bombardment Group and its squadrons (including the 6th) were inactivated.  Its personnel and equipment, along with that of supporting units at Gowen Field were combined into the 212th AAF Base Unit (Combat Crew Training School, Heavy) on 1 April 1944.
caption: 29th Bombardment Group B-24E Liberator in 1944
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