The unit was activated as a result of a recommendation made in December 1942 by the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, chaired by the Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy.

All unit members were to be volunteers, with an enlisted cadre to be selected from personnel of the 92nd Infantry Division at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

After several months of training, the unit moved to Camp Mackall, North Carolina, where it was reorganized and redesignated on 25 November 1944, as Company A of the newly formed 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion.

[4] Although there were no significant wildfires, small ones nonetheless developed from some of the balloon bombs being detonated suddenly after landing on the forests undisturbed for weeks or months mainly in California, Oregon, or Idaho.

[5] Stationed at Pendleton Field, Oregon (formerly the base of the pilots and aircraft selected for the Doolittle raid on Japan), with a detachment in Chico, California, unit members participated in fire-fighting missions throughout the Pacific Northwest during the summer and fall of 1945.

[7] The activities of the unit & Project Firefly were reported in the fourth episode of Your AAF, 'Firefighting Paratroopers' segment broadcast September 13, 1945, which can be found on YouTube and most old-time radio websites.

[8] it includes a brief interview by AAF reporter Sergeant Douglas Cooley with jumpmaster Captain Richard Williams, executive officer of the paratroop battalion, in a C47 piloted by Colonel Frank McNees, who commanded the 435th group of the 9th troop carrier command which carried the first airborne divisions over the beaches of Normandy, & later across the Rhine.

[9] Soon after returning to Camp Mackall in October 1945, the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was transferred to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, its home for the next two years.

First Lieutenant Harry Sutton, one of the battalion's former officers, died leading a rearguard action during the Hungnam evacuation and was decorated posthumously with the Silver Star.

In 1950, a large number of former 555th PIB members volunteered to form the all-black 2nd Ranger Infantry Company (Airborne).

In John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata military science fiction series, the 555 PIR is reactivated as the 555th Mobile Infantry Regiment.