508th Aerospace Sustainment Wing The 508th Aerospace Sustainment Wing ( 508 ASW ) is a wing of the United States Air Force based out of Hill Air Force Base , Utah . The 508th Aerospace Sustainment Wing provides sustainment of existing systems as well as the acquisition of new and improved airpower capabilities . It serves all U . S . military services , civil agencies and multiple foreign countries . Support includes acquisition , modifications , modernization , engineering and technical , as well as maintenance , repair and planning . The units heritage and lineage begins with the World War II 508th Fighter Group , which provided air defense of the Hawaiian Islands late in the war . During the Cold War , the Strategic Air Command 508th Fighter Escort Wing provided fighter escort for SAC strategic bombers in the 1950s ; and the 508th Tactical Fighter Group trained Air Force Reserve pilots in " Wild Weasel " SAM suppression tactics in the 1970s . History . World War II . The 508th Fighter Group was constituted on 5 October 1944 and activated on 12 October at Peterson Field , Colorado . The group trained with P - 47 Thunderbolt aircraft to provide very - long - range escort for B - 29 Superfortress bombardment units in the Pacific Theater . The lack of significant Japanese fighter defense by late 1944 caused a change of mission and the group was reassigned to Seventh Air Force in Hawaii in January 1945 and served as part of the defense force for the islands . In Hawaii , the group also trained replacement pilots for other organizations , repaired P - 47 ' s and P - 51 ' s received from combat units , and ferried aircraft to forward areas . The unit was inactivated in Hawaii on 25 November 1945 when it replaced by the 15th Fighter Group . Cold War . The 508th Fighter - Escort Wing was activated by Strategic Air Command in 1952 . Its mission was to provide fighter escort for B - 29 and B - 50 , and later B - 36 intercontinental bombers . The Strategic Air Command was founded by men who had flown bombing raids against Germany during World War II . They usually encountered swarms of enemy fighters and knew the importance of having fighter escorts . Advances in technology soon made fighter - escort wings obsolete . A single atomic bomb had more explosive power than all the bombs dropped during all of World War II , so only one of them could certainly destroy a target far more effectively than the large mass formations of World War II B - 17 s and B - 24 s . Thus SAC ' s missions were based on the use of an individual airplane , not a formation of them . During its first postwar decade ( 1945 – 1955 ) , SAC flew many B - 29 s left over from the war and later propeller - driven B - 50 s and B - 36 s . They were soon replaced by new jet bombers , the B - 47 and B - 52 . The jet bombers flew so fast and so high that they were virtually immune from fighters . Plus the early jet F - 84 s and F - 86 s in SAC ' s fighter inventory couldn ' t keep up with them . The fighter - escort wings were no longer necessary , so they were either inactivated or assigned to other commands . The wing deployed at Misawa AB , Japan , with the 319th Air Division to provide air defense , Feb ~ May 1953 and Feb ~ May 1954 . It was inactivated on 11 May 1956 . Reactivated as a Tactical Air Command reserve group at Hill AFB , Utah in 1973 when the Air Force Reserve modernization program added fighter aircraft which resulted in the unit being activated as the 508th Tactical Fighter Group and being assigned F - 105 Thunderchief aircraft which were returned from inactivated units being withdrawn from combat in Southeast Asia . Trained in Wild Weasel SAM suppression tactics . The unit changed from a group to a wing , inactivated , and the personnel and equipment were absorbed by the activating 419th Tactical Fighter Wing .