The Oxford Companion to American Military History | Air National Guard
Air National Guard. The Air National Guard (ANG) was established as a separate reserve component of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) by the National Security Act of 1947. The Guard's involvement in aviation began before World War I, when a few states established small but poorly funded flying programs. In 1915, the first viable National Guard aviation unit—the First Aero Company of New York—was organized, and a year later it was mobilized during the border crisis with Mexico. All‐Guard aviation units were disbanded by the War Department in 1917. Instead, Guardsmen played important leadership and combat aviation roles as individual volunteers in the U.S. Army Air Service.
After World War I, despite War Department opposition, Guard aviation was placed on a permanent footing. The army organized twenty‐nine Guard observation squadrons during the interwar period. Those units, with 4,800...
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