Its Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator aircraft were equipped with first generation radars to guide other bombardment groups to targets obscured by cloud cover over Occupied Europe and Nazi Germany, earning a Distinguished Unit Citation.

The mission of the 482d Operations Group is to train and equip reservists to respond to wartime and peacetime taskings as directed by higher headquarters.

Rather, its crews and airplanes dispersed to bases of other VIII Bomber Command units to provide lead aircraft for their formations.

The group earned a Distinguished Unit Citation for an 11 January 1944 mission leading bombers to targets such as aircraft factories in central Germany.

During Big Week attacks it led raids on aircraft factories at Gotha, Braunschweig and Schweinfurt.

In November 1943, the 36th and 406th Bombardment Squadrons, which had served in combat in Alaska early in the war, were formed at Alconbury.

The group performed radar photographic mapping of parts of France, the Low Countries, and Germany for training and briefing combat crews.

[8] From August 1944 to April 1945, the 482d conducted 202 radar scope and "nickling" (propaganda leaflet) sorties over hostile territory without losing a single plane.

[2] The group regrouped at Victorville Army Air Field, California on 5 July 1945, but was inactivated on 1 September 1945.

[3][11][5] Although nominally a bomber unit, it is not clear whether the group had any operational aircraft assigned, or if it was fully manned.

[3] President Truman's 1949 defense budget also required reductions in the number of groups in the Air Force,[12] and the 482d was inactivated and not replaced as reserve flying operations at New Orleans Municipal Airport ceased.

[15] The group initially flew Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star fighters, and trainers that it inherited from the 94th Wing.

When Hurricane Andrew devastated Homestead later that month, flying operations moved to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio from September to December 1992 and to MacDill Air Force Base, Florida from February 1993 until March 1994, before returning to Homestead.

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