The mission is to provide services and support which promote quality of life and project global power through combat-proven airlift and airdrop.

The 11,000 to 13,000-foot, jungle-clad Owen Stanley Range of New Guinea, known as "the Hump,"[note 1] was commemorated on the unit emblem, approved on 17 June 1944, and still in use to this day.

[2] In the final month of the Pacific War, the 22d relocated to Nielson Field, Luzon, in the recently liberated Philippines, adding the larger Curtiss C-46 Commando transport plane to its veteran fleet of C-47s.

When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the squadron was flying combat resupply and support missions from Nielson Field, until it was inactivated at the end of January 1946, its personnel being returned to the United States.

[2] When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, the squadron flew thousands of missions across the Sea of Japan in direct support of United Nations troops fighting the Communist-backed invasion of South Korea.

Its C-54s flew into Kimpo Air Base and other permanent airfields, flying in equipment and evacuating casualties to hospitals in Japan.

It continued flying combat support missions into Southeast Asia from Tachikawa along with trans-Pacific flights to the United States until June 1969 when it was inactivated as part of the retirement of the C-124 and a general budget reduction with the new Nixon Administration.

It returned US servicemen and equipment from Indochina in the wake of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, which ended United States involvement in the war.

However, squadron aircraft returned to South Vietnam in April 1975 as part of Operation Baby Lift, the evacuation of children and infants from the combat area near Saigon.

[3] After Vietnam, the squadron returned to normal peacetime operations through the 1970s and early 1980s, supporting United States initiatives throughout the world by airlifting passengers, equipment and materiel wherever needed.

Pinatubo eruption, and Operations Provide Relief and Restore Hope (1992 to 1993), aiding thousands of famine victims in Somalia.