The logistics function can be traced before the earliest days of the Air Service, when the Equipment Division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps established a headquarters for its new Airplane Engineering Department at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio.

McCook Field established the Air School of Application in 1919 and after WW I, the department was renamed the Airplane Engineering Division on 31 August 1918, under Lt Col Jesse G. Vincent (Packard co-engineer of the 1917 V-12 Liberty engine) to study and design American versions of foreign aircraft.

The Materiel Division, controlled by the Office of the Chief of Air Corps (OCAC), possessed many characteristics of a major command.

It brought together four major functions performed previously by three organizations: research and development (R&D), procurement, supply, and maintenance.

[4] By 22 August 1935, the division[citation needed] operated an Army Aeronautical Museum at Wright Field,[5] and by 22 November 1935, had an "Industrial War Plans Section".

[9] Then-Brigadier General Benjamin Foulois had a year as Chief of the Materiel Division at Wright Field from June 1929 to July 1930.

[citation needed] The Air Corps Maintenance Command was established under the Materiel Division on June 25, 1941 - less than a week after the creation of the USAAF itself on June 20, 1941 - to control supply and maintenance and retained the "Air Corps" designation that remained in effect for the USAAF's training and logistics units.

On 11 December 1941, with United States newly engaged in World War II, these four functions were divided between two organizations.

Gen. Henry J. F. Miller, was charged with supervision in the United States of all AAF activities pertaining to storage and issue of supplies procured by the Air Corps and with overhaul, repair, maintenance, and salvage of all Air Corps equipment and supplies beyond the limits of the first two echelons of maintenance.

But a large portion of the headquarters organization remained at Wright Field, where it carried on the greater part of the command's activities.

The elimination of the four air service areas was apparently justified by subsequent operations; according to Maj. Gen. Walter H. Frank, commander of the ASC, the step proved "most beneficial."

From the early 1950s to 1962, the 3079th Aviation Depot Wing under AMC, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was a weapons of mass destruction unit of key strategic importance.