Constituted on 1 July 1916 in the Regular Army as Battery C, 16th Field Artillery, the unit was organized on 21 May 1917 at Camp Robinson, Wisconsin.

To its credit, the battalion participated in numerous campaigns during World War 1, to Include the Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, Meuse-argonne, and Champagne 1918.

The 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery continued this relationship as the command and control headquarters for "Task Force Thunder", an element of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The battalion remained prepared to deploy anywhere in the world to synchronize and provide fires in support of sustained, decisive full spectrum operations to achieve assigned objectives.

Upon arriving at the port in Kuwait, the soldiers of the Rolling Thunder battalion went into action and downloaded all of its equipment in a record manner.

Once downloaded, the equipment was moved to the staging area for forward movement to Camp Udairi, 22 km south of the Iraqi border.

The soldiers of Cyclone were given the mission to provide direct artillery support to 3–67 Armor as it sought to secure the main MEK compound 75 km north of Baqubah.

C Battery and TF Thunder were ordered to reorganize and received a new mission with duty in the cities Al Husseinia, Ar Rashidiyah and Khan Bani Sad, north of Baghdad just east of the Tigris River.

It was during this time that TF Thunder succeeded in creating security and stability for over 750,000 Iraqis and conducted the first CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) sanctioned democratic elections in the Baghdad Province in December 2003.

In addition to numerous civil affairs projects to help the Iraqis in the region, TF Thunder was known for being willing to use force, but being judicious in its application.

[citation needed] This gained tremendous respect among the local Iraqis and set the conditions for no further soldiers killed in action during this deployment.

The unit's mission was to maintain warfighting readiness and, on order, deploy by land, sea, or air to conduct combat operations by coordinating fire support that provides safe, timely, and lethal fires in support of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.

Most of the unit, along with the rest of the 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division was tasked with training Iraqi Security Forces so that they can conduct operations independently of coalition troops, with the exception of 2 squads from B Battery, guns (M109A6 PALDIN) B15 and B18 who conducted live counter-fire operations in support of 1-67 Armour and 2-8 Infantry (Mechanized), both of 2nd BCT, 4ID.