page_title: 84th Combat Sustainment Group
section_title: Fighter-Bomber Group
hierarchical_section_title: 84th Combat Sustainment Group / History / World War II / Fighter-Bomber Group
caption_attribution_description: English: P-47 Thunderbolt from Aloe AAF, Texas, 1943
context_page_description: The 84th Combat Sustainment Group is an inactive United States Air Force group last assigned to the 84th Combat Sustainment Wing at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, where it was inactivated in 2010. The group was formed in 1942 as the 84th Bombardment Group, one of the first dive bomber units in the United States Army Air Corps and tested the Vultee Vengeance, proving that aircraft unsuitable as a dive bomber. As an Operational Training Unit, it was the parent for several other bombardment groups, but from 1943 until it was disbanded in 1944, trained replacement aircrews as a Replacement Training Unit designated the 84th Fighter-Bomber Group.
  The group was again active as a fighter group from 1949 to 1951 in the Air Force Reserves, with no equipment of its own, but using that of the Regular 52d Fighter-All Weather Group until it was called to active duty in 1951 and its personnel used to man other units.
  In 1955, as part of an Air Defense Command program to revive fighter units that had served in World War II, the group became the 84th Fighter Group and served as the USAF host at Geiger Field and served in an air defense role in the northwestern United States until inactivating in 1963.
context_section_description: In 1943, the group was redesignated as the 84th Fighter-Bomber Group as were other AAF single engine bombardment groups, and re-equipped with Republic P-47 Thunderbolts. As a result of this redesignation, its squadrons were renumbered as the 496th, 497th, 498th, and 491st Fighter-Bomber Squadrons, respectively.  During World War II, the 84th Group served as an Operational Training Unit (OTU) until October 1943. The OTU program involved the use of an oversized parent unit to provide cadres to "satellite groups." During the fall of 1943, group operations dwindled and by the end of September 1943 only five aircraft were assigned to the group.
  The group then became a Replacement Training Unit (RTU) and also participated occasionally in demonstrations and maneuvers. RTUs were also oversized units, but with the mission of training individual pilots or aircrews. In performing this mission, the group assumed a split operation, with group headquarters and the 491st and 497th Squadrons moving to Harding Field, Louisiana, while the 496th and 498th Squadrons moved to Hammond Army Air Field, Louisiana in October and November 1943 and Abilene Army Air Field, Texas in February 1944.
  However, the AAF found that standard military units, based on relatively inflexible tables of organization were proving less well adapted to the training mission in the US.  Accordingly a more functional system was adopted in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit. The group was, therefore, disbanded in April 1944 and replaced at Harding by the 236th AAF Base Unit (Combat Crew Training School, Fighter) as the Army Air Forces disbanded its units in the US that were not programmed to be transferred overseas.  At the same time, the 261st AAF Base Unit (Combat Crew Training School, Fighter) took over the personnel, equipment and mission of the squadrons at Abilene.
caption: P-47 from a US based RTU
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