ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. --
From the time the 461st Air Control Wing was flying B-24 Liberators over Nazi-occupied Europe, to the day the last E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft lifted off from Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, there has been one constant – maintainers getting the job done.
With the activation of the 461st Bombardment Group July 1, 1943, during World War II, flying the B-24 Liberator is when the 461st BG maintainers began displaying their hard work and dedication to keep aircraft flying for aircrews to accomplish the mission.
Since the 461st BG’s first combat mission April 2, 1944, the maintenance personnel worked daily to keep the B-24s flying. They displayed hard work and dedication in the face of adverse conditions to accomplish the mission. This back-breaking work included repairing battle damage from enemy fighters and anti-aircraft guns.
The maintenance crews of the 461st BG were a major factor in the group’s success, including the awarding of two Distinguished Unit Citations, now known as the Presidential Unit Citation.
The excellent condition of the 461st BG’s fleet enabled the group to score its highest bombing score of the war. This feat was achieved during mission number 96, targeting the Smederovo Ferry Slip in Yugoslavia. On Sept. 3, 1944, the bombs were dropped on and around the ferry slip in such a concentration that 92.2% were plotted within 1,000 feet of the briefed aiming point. The average expected from a B-24 Liberator group was 30% of its bombs within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. The 461st BG was later inactivated Aug. 27, 1945.
Since Oct. 1, 2011, the day the 461st Air Control Wing was activated, the maintainers have continued the traditions of those before them by contributing to many JSTARS accomplishments, allowing the aircraft to fly over 13,000 sorties totaling more than 90,000 hours.
The Joint STARS aircraft were converted from used Boeing 707 airframes, which Boeing had stopped producing in the mid-1990s. All the Joint STARS aircraft that came to Northrup Grumman for conversion were built in the 1960s and already had anywhere between 20,000 to over 65,000 flight hours.
This would require Air Force maintainers to work on an already aging airframe with limited spare parts ensuring aircraft are available to meet mission requirements.
The 461st Maintenance Group and its two squadrons – the 461st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron and the 461st Maintenance Squadron – were up for the task along with their maintenance counterparts from the 116th Air Control Wing.
Maintainers of the 461st and 116th AMXS earned the 2012 Air Force Maintenance Effectiveness Award. They had generated a perfect 141 of 141 tasked combat sorties while deployed to support operations of Libya.
Seven years later they again achieved a perfect record, as the 461st ACW maintainers allowed the JSTARS to fly 39 of 39 tasked sorties over Europe in late 2019.
“I have never seen anything like that, to not lose a sortie in Germany in the wintertime and with JSTARS,” said Lt. Col. Stephen Barbour, 10th Expeditionary Airborne Command and Control Squadron commander.
On Sept. 30, 2019, the Joint STARS aircraft had reached an incredible 113,000 combat hours in support of operations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. Despite working on an airframe often older than the maintainers themselves, their hard work and dedication empowered the JSTARS to fly an average of 19.4 hours each day since 9/11.
On July 12, 2023, the 12th Airborne Command and Control Squadron of the 461st ACW flew the final active-duty flight of the Joint STARS aircraft. This marked an end to almost 12 years of the 461st ACW flying the JSTARS, providing battle management, command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance for various military operations throughout the world.
A few months after that, the 461st Aircraft Maintenance Group and Aircraft Maintenance Squadron inactivated after decades of providing skilled maintenance to the E-8C platform.
The biggest testament to the hard work and dedication to the mission of the JSTARS maintainers was said by Col. Adam Shelton, 461st Air Control Wing commander.
“It is worth noting, specifically in the logs of history, JSTARS is probably the only platform for as long as it flew, never lost a single airframe to an adversary attack or a catastrophic maintenance failure.”