It was the first of the final group of dedicated night fighter interceptor squadrons formed by the Army Air Forces, being programmed to deploy to the Southwest Pacific.

[4] The primary target for the squadron was the Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bomber, which the Japanese used to attack American bases after dark with almost total impunity prior to the introduction of the Black Widow.

The Japanese had improved the performance of the Betty in 1943 with new supercharged engines that gave it a speed in excess of over 300 mph and a higher ceiling.

[4] After operating in the Netherlands East Indies during the balance of 1944, in January 1945 the squadron moved to the new American airfield at Lingayen Gulf on Luzon in the Philippines.

Due to the overwhelming superiority of Allied day fighters in the Philippines, the Japanese were forced to conduct operations during the hours of darkness.

With these modifications, night interdiction raids were carried out on Japanese airfields where it could both strafe the field and also drop ordnance on buildings and other facilities.

However, with the Atomic Bomb attacks on Japan the war ended and it moved to Atsugi Airfield near Tokyo in October as part of the occupation forces on Honshu.

This would include broadcasting of messages in Vietnamese from observation aircraft equipped with loudspeakers flying at low altitudes over communist controlled areas and leaflet dropping missions.

The training was for missions that would be difficult and dangerous, as the communists were ultra-sensitive to them, with the aircraft almost always drawing ground fire by flying at low altitudes.

After each American offensive action, the special operations pilots would fly over the area and broadcast funeral dirges and wailing sounds to play on the communists superstitions.

[5] Beginning in the summer of 1972, it began training USAF and South Vietnamese forward air controllers (FAC) to direct tactical fighters in attacks on communist forces in addition to the psychological warfare mission.