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

The squadron trained at various airfields in the San Joaquin Valley with the Douglas P-70 Havoc and YP-61 Black Widow night fighter and was ready to deploy into combat by late October.

[3] The squadron moved by train to Seattle, Washington where it boarded a troop ship bound for Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands.

After being part of the defense forces of Hawaii for several weeks, it was deployed to East Field, Saipan in late February 1945 to provide night interceptor coverage of the new bases on Saipan and Guam for the Twentieth Air Force, which was going to use the airfields to carry out very long range strategic bombing of the Japanese Home Islands with the new B-29 Superfortress.

Even after its capture, Iwo Jima remained vulnerable to long range Japanese attacks, and its mission was to defend the new American airfields being built there.

A large percentage of the squadron's missions consisted of long-distance patrols over water, many of which involved interceptions of Japanese Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bombers.

It was demobilized there in early 1946, and inactivated on 5 February as an administrative unit[3] The squadron was reactivated briefly on 26 June 1946 as part of the 21st Fighter Group at Northwest Field on Guam.