However, the unit was first formed about a week earlier when some Air Service recruits arrived at Kelly but remained an un-designated organization.

On the 29th, the squadron crossed the English Channel, arriving in Le Havre, France later that day, marching in about a foot of snow to another rest camp.

[1] On 26 February, the 800th Aero Squadron was divided into three flights, each of which would be able to function as an individual unit in the repair and upkeep of airplanes and engines.

A program of camp sanitation was begun and the men of the squadron performed many duties, from furnishing electrical power to the buildings as well as supplying the goods and services necessary for the operation of the school.

Coëtquidan was, in fact, one of the largest artillery camps since the time of Napoleon and had recently been turned over to the United States Army.

Some Americans had already arrived and assembled six ancient French planes, the men having completed courses of instruction at the Renault, Loraine, Dietrich, Farman and Breguet engine factories.

Men without carpentry or other construction skills were put into building serviceable streets and also erecting some hangars and cleaning up the airfield.

As time passed, additional facilities were built and conditions improved, to the point of building tennis courts in August.

On 21 January 1922 the 125th Squadron, Alabama National Guard, received federal recognition as a Corps Aviation unit.

In the first few years of operation, while constructing the facilities at Roberts Field, the Squadron participated in mine rescue work, began a program of providing aerial photographs of points of industrial and historical interest throughout Alabama, and provided the first Air Mail service in the State of Alabama.

Twenty-five officers and 100 men participated for 14 days and nights, flying a total of approximately 300 hours dropping food and medicine to marooned families.

When Colonel Smith moved up to the 31st Division, command of the Squadron passed to Henry Badham Jr., one of the founding members of the Birmingham Flying Club.

The city held a memorial service involving a flyover by the planes of the unit he founded and his old friend and former World War I wingman, Eddie Rickenbacker, returned to Birmingham to be an honorary pall-bearer.

Transferred to Third Air Force and moved to Tennessee in late 1942, the 106th began training for combat observation and liaison duties then as a medium bombardment squadron flying the B-25 Mitchell.

In late 1943, the 106th was deployed to the South Pacific Area (SPA) and arrived at Guadalcanal on 15 November 1943, the 106th immediately began performing its new bombing mission.

In the Pacific Theater, the squadron engaged enemy forces in New Guinea; the Northern Solomon Islands; Bismarck Archipelago; on Leyte, Luzon and Mindanao in the Philippine Campaign, and also in southeast China.

The squadron was equipped with B-26C Invader light bombers and was assigned to the 54th Fighter Wing, Georgia ANG for administration, while being under the operational control of the Alabama Air National Guard.

Parts for the B-26s were no problem with the massive amount of supplies still stored in wartime warehouses, and many of the maintenance personnel were World War II veterans so readiness was quite high and the planes were often much better maintained than their USAF counterparts.

It moved to Shaw on 5 January 1952 where it replaced the 162d Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron which was deployed to Itazuke AB, Japan to fly photo-reconnaissance missions over Korea.

Many of the squadron's pilots were deployed to Japan and South Korea where they served in combat, flying hazardous unarmed night reconnaissance missions over enemy-held territory.

Replacing the Invader in May 1957 were new RF-84F Thunderflash jet reconnaissance aircraft, manufactured by Republic for Air National Guard service.

In the United States, the Birmingham News daily newspaper reported that 'their boys', after the sudden mobilization and the weeks of preparation, had not been sent to Europe to sit around a French airfield doing nothing.

At the end of November 1961 he received permission from the French traffic controllers to go with his aircraft to Chaumont-Semoutiers AB, another USAFE-controlled base in France.

In November 1971 the Thunderflashes were retired as they reached the end of their service life and the 117th TRG was chosen to be the first Air National Guard squadron to receive the RF-4C Phantom II tactical reconnaissance aircraft.

The squadron received aircraft directly being withdrawn from Southeast Asia as part of the United States pullout from the Vietnam War.

At Nellis AFB, sixty-seven members of the 106th TRS obtained realistic combat training against the 64th Tactical Fighter Training Aggressor Squadron, equipped with F-5E Tiger II aggressor aircraft which simulated Soviet Air Force MiG-21 air defense fighters.

By early 1989, the operational lifetime of the F-4 Phantom was ending, and the number of RF-4C squadrons serving both on active-duty as well as in Air National Guard units was being reduced.

When the United States military build-up in the Middle East began following Saddam Hussein's 2 August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, six RF-4Cs of the 117th TRW equipped with a camera upgrade called the HIAC-1 LOROP (Long Range Oblique Photography) deployed on 24 August 1990 to Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates.

Their journey to the war zone may have been the longest nonstop flight made by operational warplanes at that time, requiring 16 air-to-air refuelings and spanning 8,000 nautical miles in 15.5 hours.

It was used to conduct prewar surveillance and photo-reconnaissance mapping of Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait as well as those deployed along the Saudi Arabia-Iraq border.