The first C-119 prototype (called the XC-82B) made its initial flight in November 1947, with deliveries of C-119Bs from Fairchild's Hagerstown, Maryland factory beginning in December 1949.

[2] In 1951, Henry J. Kaiser was awarded a contract to assemble additional C-119s at the Kaiser-Frazer automotive factory located in the former B-24 plant at Willow Run Airport in Belleville, Michigan.

[3] The AC-119G Shadow gunship variant was fitted with four six-barrel 7.62 mm (0.300 in) NATO miniguns, armor plating, flare launchers, and night-capable infrared equipment.

[4] In December 1950, after People's Republic of China Expeditionary People's Volunteer Army troops blew up a bridge [N 1]at a narrow point on the evacuation route between Koto-ri and Hungnam, blocking the withdrawal of U.N. forces, eight U.S. Air Force C-119 Flying Boxcars flown by the 314th Troop Carrier Group [6][N 2] were used to drop portable bridge sections by parachute.

[7] The 456th Troop Carrier Wing, which was attached to the Strategic Air Command (SAC) from 25 April 1955 – 26 May 1956, used C-119s to retrieve instrument packages from high-altitude reconnaissance balloons.

The C-119 was to play a major role during the siege at Dien Bien Phu, where they flew into increasingly heavy fire while dropping supplies to the besieged French forces.

Both pilots, together with a French crew member, were killed in early June, 1954, when their C-119, while making an artillery drop, was hit and crippled by Viet Minh anti-aircraft fire; the aircraft then flew an additional 75 miles (121 km) into Laos before it crashed.

It also played two major parts in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, being one of the aircraft types used to transport army paratroopers for the Tangail Airdrop, and after 1971/12/16 93,000 Pakistani POW's to India pending negotiations for their trial or repatriation.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Air National Guard and USAF Reserve pilots flew C-119's to drop parachutist students for the US Army Parachute School at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

Many C-119s were provided to other nations as part of the Military Assistance Program, including Belgium, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Italy, Jordan, Taiwan, and (as previously mentioned) South Vietnam.

A number of aircraft were acquired by companies that were contracted by federal agencies, including the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to provide airtankers for fighting wildfires.

[citation needed] Several aircraft were observed, as late as 1990, by paratroopers with the 6th Infantry Division, to be in Forest Service use as jump planes for "smokejumper" firefighters in Alaska.

Related lists This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Air Force Website of origin: USAF Museum