It was last assigned to the 42d Bombardment Wing at Loring Air Force Base, Maine, where it was inactivated on 30 April 1994.

Its cadre moved to Rapid City Army Air Base a little over a week later, where it began to equip as a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Operational Training Unit (OTU) the following year.

[4] However, the AAF was finding that standard military units like the 542d, which were based on relatively inflexible tables of organization were not well adapted to the training mission.

Accordingly, it adopted a more functional system in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit, which was manned and equipped for the specific training mission.

The first of the new planes did not arrive until October, and the squadron did not reach full strength until April 1958 and did not become combat ready until May.

[9] Starting in 1960, one third of the squadron's aircraft were maintained on fifteen minute alert, fully fueled to reduce vulnerability to a Soviet missile strike.

[1][13] On 5 September 1983, members of the 42d escorted a flight of McDonnell F-4E Phantom IIs deploying across the Atlantic to a base in Germany.

Crew E-113 managed to connect its boom to the Phantom's refueling receptacle and literally tow the fighter back up to 10,000 feet above sea level.

[1] In 1989, the squadron provided crews and tankers to support Operation Just Cause, the incursion into Panama to replace Manuel Noriega's government.

[1] In September 1991, SAC implemented the Air Force's Objective Wing organization and the squadron was assigned to the newly-formed 42d Operations Group.

This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency