The 635th Radar Squadron is an inactive

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

unit. It was last assigned to the

20th Air Division The 20th Air Division is an inactive United States Air Force organization. Its last assignment was with Tactical Air Command at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida where it was inactivated on 1 March 1983. During most of the division's history it ...

Aerospace Defense Command Aerospace Defense Command was a major command of the United States Air Force, responsible for continental air defense. It was activated in 1968 and disbanded in 1980. Its predecessor, Air Defense Command, was established in 1946, briefly inac ...

, stationed at

Dauphin Island Air Force Station Dauphin Island Air Force Station is a closed United States Air Force General Surveillance Radar station. It is located east of Dauphin Island, Alabama, near historic Fort Gaines (Alabama). It was closed in 1980. Beginning in September 1982, ...

, Alabama. It was inactivated on 1 July 1974. The unit was a General Surveillance Radar squadron providing for the air defense of the United States.

History

The squadron was first activated as an Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron (AC&W Sq) in 1947 at

McChord Field McChord Field is a United States Air Force base in the northwest United States, in Pierce County, Washington. South of Tacoma, McChord Field is the home of the 62d Airlift Wing, Air Mobility Command, the field's primary mission being worldw ...

, WA Abstract, History of 635 AC&W Sq, May-Dec 1947
(accessed 5 Apr 2012) with a mission to detect and warn of aircraft and defend an area to the west of the Cascade Mountains. To accomplish its mission, it had detachments at Arlington, WA (WW II Site F-50),

Neah Bay Neah Bay is a census-designated place (CDP) on the Makah Reservation in Clallam County, Washington, United States. The population was 865 at the 2010 census. It is across the Canada–US border from British Columbia. Originally called "Scarborou ...

, WA (Det E, WW II Site J-55), Bellingham, WA, Spokane AFB, WA (WW II 4 AF Site 129), Coleville, WA, Pacific Beach, WA (Det D, WW II Site B-61, Lashup Site L-35),

Sequim Sequim ( ) is a city in Clallam County, Washington, United States. It is located along the Dungeness River near the base of the Olympic Mountains. The 2010 census counted a population of 6,606. Sequim lies within the rain shadow of the Olympic M ...

, WA (Det F), Everett, WA (Det B, Lashup Site L-31) and Fort Stevens, OR (Lashup Site L-36, Det C), located on World War II Sites. Abstract, History of 635 AC&W Sq, CY 1948
(accessed 5 Apr 2012) Its main search radar to perform this mission at this time was the

AN/CPS-5 The AN/FPS-20 was a widely used L band early warning and ground-controlled interception radar system employed by the United States Air Force Air Defense Command, the NORAD Pinetree Line in Canada, the USAF CONAD in the continental United States, a ...

. In the early 1950s, most of its detachments were replaced by separate squadrons. The squadron moved to

Fort Lawton Fort Lawton was a United States Army post located in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington overlooking Puget Sound. In 1973 a large majority of the property, 534 acres of Fort Lawton, was given to the city of Seattle and dedicated as ...

, WA in 1960. It joined the

Semi Automatic Ground Environment The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. S ...

(SAGE) system and was redesignated as a Radar Squadron in 1960.Cornett & Johnson, p. 155 It was inactivated in 1963. The Squadron was activated again in 1973 to replace Operating Location G of the

630th Radar Squadron 63 may refer to: * 63 (number) * one of the years 63 BC, AD 63, 1963, 2063 * +63, telephone country code in the Philippines * Flight 63 (disambiguation) * ''63'' (album), by Tree63 * ''63'' (mixtape), by Kool A.D. * "Sixty Three", a song by Karm ...

at Dauphin Island AFS as part of the Southern Air Defense System (SADS). SADS had been established because of the inadequacy of the radar coverage to the south of the United States that had been dramatically illustrated whan a Cuban

MiG-17 The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 (russian: Микоян и Гуревич МиГ-17; NATO reporting name: Fresco) is a high-subsonic fighter aircraft produced in the Soviet Union from 1952 and was operated by air forces internationally. The MiG-17 w ...

went undetected before it landed at

Homestead AFB Homestead Air Reserve Base (Homestead ARB), previously known as Homestead Air Force Base (Homestead AFB) is located in Miami–Dade County, Florida to the northeast of the city of Homestead. It is home to the 482nd Fighter Wing (482 FW) of the ...

,Leonard, p. 172 and two years later, an

An-24 The Antonov An-24 (Russian/Ukrainian: Антонов Ан-24) ( NATO reporting name: Coke) is a 44-seat twin turboprop transport/passenger aircraft designed in 1957 in the Soviet Union by the Antonov Design Bureau and manufactured by Kyiv, Irk ...

similarly arrived unannounced at

New Orleans International Airport Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport ( French: ''Aéroport international Louis Armstrong de La Nouvelle-Orléans'') is an international airport under Class B airspace in Kenner, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is ...

. As a result, ADC established SADS with the squadron operating a manual control center at the Houston ARTCC and added radars to supplement the existing

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

coverage in the area. However, the squadron was inactivated little more than a year later.

Lineage

* Constituted as the 635th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron : Activated 21 May 1947 : Redesignated 635th Radar Squadron (SAGE) on 11 June 1960 : Inactivated on 1 August 1963 : Redesignated 635th Radar Squadron : Activated 1 January 1973 : Inactivated 1 July 1974

Assignments

505th Aircraft Control and Warning Group 5 (five) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number, and cardinal number, following 4 and preceding 6, and is a prime number. It has attained significance throughout history in part because typical humans have five digits on eac ...

, 21 May 1947 *

25th Air Division The 25th Air Division is an inactive United States Air Force intermediate echelon command and control organization. It was last assigned to First Air Force, Tactical Air Command (ADTAC). It was inactivated on 30 September 1990 at McChord Air ...

, 6 February 1952 *

4704th Defense Wing The 4704th Defense Wing is a discontinued United States Air Force organization. Its last assignment was with the 25th Air Division of Air Defense Command (ADC) at McChord Air Force Base, Washington, where it was discontinued in 1954. It was est ...

, 1 January 1953 * 25th Air Division, 8 October 1954 *

Seattle Air Defense Sector The Western Air Defense Sector (WADS) is a unit of the Washington Air National Guard located at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Tacoma, Washington. As a state militia unit, the Western Air Defense Sector is not in the normal United States Air Force cha ...

, 1 March 1960 - 1 August 1963 * 20th Air Division, 1 January 1973– 1 July 1974

Stations

* McChord Field (later McChord Air Force Base), Washington, 21 May 1947 *

Paine Field Paine Field , also known as Snohomish County Airport, is a commercial and general aviation airport serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It is located in unincorporated Snohomish County, Washington, between the ...

, Washington, 26 September 1948 * McChord Air Force Base, Washington, 22 September 1950 * Fort Lawton, Washington, 15 May 1960 * Dauphin Island Air Force Station, Alabama, 1 January 1973 – 1 July 1974

References

* * * * *

External links