The 415th Night Fighter Squadron was formed in February 1943, and it carried out missions in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, and then in northwestern Europe during World War II.

At that time, the squadron was assigned to the Army Air Forces School of Applied Tactics for training in the P-70 night fighter, a converted Douglas A-20 Havoc medium bomber.

The ground component moved from Florida on 22 April 1943 to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, and it left there a week later on the transport ship USAT "Shawnee" for North Africa.

In June 1943, the ground component moved to Tunisia, where it worked with a Royal Air Force night fighter squadron.

The squadron was moved to Sicily in early September, and later to the mainland of Italy in December as the Allies continued gain ground on the Axis powers.

Through April 1945, the squadron flew patrols and intruder missions, concentrating its attacks on enemy installations, supplies, communications, and troops.

The squadron moved to Tonopah Test Range Airport on 28 October 1983, performing training missions with the F-117A in a clandestine environment.

On 10 November 1988, the U.S. Air Force brought the F-117A from behind a "black veil" by publicly acknowledging its existence, but the USAF provided few details about it.

Pilots began occasionally flying the F-117A during the day, but personnel were still ferried to and from work each Monday and Friday from Nellis Air Force Base.

Mission planners had assigned critical strategic Iraqi command and control installations to the F-117A, counting on the aircraft's ability to hit precisely at well-defended targets without being seen.

Other vital targets included key communications centers, research and development facilities for nuclear and chemical weapons, plus hardened aircraft shelters on Iraqi airfields.

On the first night of the war, an F-117A dropped a 2000-pound laser-guided GBU-27 Paveway III bomb right through the roof of the general communications building in downtown Baghdad.

The 43 F-117As of the 37th Wing dropped more than 2,000 tons of precision ordnance and attacked some 40 percent of the high-value targets that were struck by the Coalition forces.

The F-117's concealment, deception, and evasiveness proved that it could survive in the most hostile of environments, and its laser-guided bombs struck with extreme accuracy.

[6] Most of the F-117As deployed to Saudi Arabia returned home to Tonopah in early April 1991, although a few remained as part of the post-Desert Storm task force in Southwest Asia.