In March 1916, the 1st Aero Squadron, with Captain Benjamin D. Foulois as commander, supported General "Black Jack" Pershing's punitive expeditions into Mexico.

During the period 1935–1940 the 9th Bombardment Group trained aircrews, took part in maneuvers, and participated in air shows, equipped with Keystone B-6 (1935–36), Martin B-10 (1936–38), and the B-18 Bolo (1938–1942).

Henry Huglin) assembled at Dalhart, forming the command and operations cadres, and were transferred with the group to McCook Army Airfield, Nebraska.

After a brief period establishing the units at McCook, the cadre of group and squadron operations staffs went by train to the Army Air Force School of Applied Tactics in Orlando, Florida.

The 9th Group had been forced to use B-17's in its training because the development of the B-29 as an operational weapon had been plagued since an early flight test on 28 December 1942, resulted in an engine fire.

This culminated in a massive emergency modification program in the winter of 1943–44 ordered by Chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces, General Henry H. Arnold, and nicknamed the "Battle of Kansas".

After four further months of training, Col. Eisenhart declared the unit ready for movement overseas, and its ground echelon left McCook for the Seattle, Washington, port of embarkation on 18 November 1944, traveling by the troopship U.S.S.

The ground echelon of the group debarked at Tinian on 28 December and was assigned a camp on the west side of the island between the two airfields.

The air echelon of the 9th Bombardment Group began its overseas movement in January 1945 by sending the combat crews to Herington Field, Kansas, where over a three-week period they accepted 37 new B-29s.

The last of the original 37 airplanes to reach Tinian arrived on 12 February, by which time the group had already flown its first combat mission.

The 9th Bombardment Group conducted four training missions against the Japanese-held Maug Islands in the Northern Marianas on 27, 29, 31 January, and 6 February.

The second group mission was a pre-invasion bombing of Iwo Jima on 12 February, one week prior to D-Day for Operation Detachment.

The capture of Iwo Jima had as its objective an emergency landing field for Twentieth Air Force bombers attacking Japan and a base for P-51D Mustang and P-47N Thunderbolt fighters to fly escort and strafing missions.

That same day Col. Eisenhart was made Operations Officer of the 339th Bombardment Wing and was succeeded in command of the group by Lt. Col. Huglin.

After 9 March bombing altitudes rarely exceeded 20,000 feet, reducing the amount of climb required to assemble and further conserving fuel and engine life.

At a designated rendezvous point off the coast of Japan, lead B-29's (using colored-smoke generators to identify themselves) flew circles with a radius of a mile or more, at different altitudes and in different directions for squadrons within a group.

The formation stayed together only in the target area, breaking up again and reducing altitude to return to base (or Iwo Jima) individually.

On the group's seventh mission, which lasted from 9 to 10 March 1945, XXI Bomber Command radically changed tactics at the direction of its commander, Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, attacking Tokyo's urban center by night with incendiary bombs and at altitudes of only 6,400 to 7,800 feet, resulting in one of the most destructive attacks in history.

Flying at night at 5,500 feet in what the citation stated was "the second most heavily-defended zone in Japan", the group sowed 1425 mines in 209 sorties with a 92% accuracy rate, primarily against Shimonoseki Straits and harbors on Kyūshū and the northwest coast of Honshū.

This caused the 9th to win another DUE the following month that and the blocking of Inland Sea traffic as well as the isolation of important Japanese ports.

On 1 June 9 Bombardment Group resumed a grim campaign of night incendiary raids against the remaining urban areas of Japan not previously attacked that continued to its final mission, 14 August 1945.

Of the 71 combat missions, 27 were incendiary raids, 14 mining operations (with 328 total sorties), 13 against airfields, 9 against aircraft production, and 9 against other industry or targets other than the home islands.

Although partially demobilized with personnel and aircraft, the 9th returned to the United States, and moved to Clark Field in the Philippines on 15 April 1946.

It relocated to Harmon Field on Guam on 9 June 1947, by which time it was largely a paper organization with few personnel or aircraft.

The reconnaissance photographs helped geologists map surface ruptures, fault lines, and potential landslide sites.

The pictures also pinpointed infrastructure damage and allowed local and national planners to assess the relief and recovery needs.

Then, when Serbia began the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians in Kosovo, Operation Allied Force halted the killing and restored order.

During U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in late 2001 and Iraq in early 2003, the group also flew the unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk aircraft.