The 117th Air Refueling Wing consists of the following units: The 117th Fighter Group was extended federal recognition on 1 October 1947 at Birmingham Municipal Airport, Alabama.

The group moved to Lawson Air Force Base, Georgia and began to train as a tactical reconnaissance unit.

However Toul Air Base was still under construction, and delays in France for several reasons forced the 117th to remain at Lawson for over a year until finally receiving deployment orders in January 1952.

However at the time of the Wing's arrival, Toul consisted of a sea of mud, and the new jet runway was breaking up and could not support safe flying.

The mission of the 117th was to provide tactical, visual, photographic and electronic reconnaissance by both day and night, as was required by the military forces within the European command.

The two RF-80 squadrons of the 117th had to complete a number of varying missions, including vertical photography of prospective paratroop air drop zones, oblique photos of the Rhine and Danube river bridges, vertical photography of the airfields of Jever, Faßberg, Celle, Sundorf and Gütersloh and various visual missions on behalf of the Seventh Army, including artillery adjustment for the 816th Field Artillery Battalion.

However elements of the three other squadrons rotated to France as operational components of the 7117th Tactical Wing over the next year and 106th pilots returned to the United States.

By 22 November, elements of the wing reassembled at the newly reactivated Dreux for an estimated stay of ten months.

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 Air Base, another USAFE in France.

Permission was received from the French to move on 8 December 1961, however HQ USAFE insisted that the 7117th Wing headquarters remain at Dreux for airlift traffic.

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

The squadron received aircraft being withdrawn from Southeast Asia as part of the United States pullout from the Vietnam War.

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 wing RF-4Cs 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.

The wing lost aircraft 64-1044 crewed by Major Barry K. Henderson and Lt. Col. Stephen G. Schraam in an operational accident on 8 October 1990.

After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the 117th deployed to MacDill Air Force Base, Florida and began refueling F-15 and F-16 aircraft flying combat air patrol missions over major cities in the Southeastern United States as part of Operation Noble Eagle.