Gunfighter Mission

Provide mission-ready Gunfighters to conduct military operations anytime, anywhere

Gunfighter Vision

America's Most Elite Fighter Wing 

Current Operations & Organizations

The 366th Fighter Wing has the firepower of more than 50 F-15E Strike Eagle. Additionally Mountain Home AFB hosts the Republic of Singapore Air Force F-15SG aircraft. The wing population consists of approximately 5,100 military and civilian members in addition to 3,500 family members.

The wing is home to three fighter squadrons:
  • The 389th Fighter Squadron (389th FS) Thunderbolts or T-Bolts
  • The 391st Fighter Squadron (391st FS) Tigers
  • The Republic of Singapore 428th Fighter Squadron (428th FS) Buccaneers.
The 726th Air Control Squadron (726th ACS) is a tenant unit of the 366th Operations Group. They are a Control and Reporting Center (CRC) and responsible for mobile, decentralized command and control of joint operations by conducting threat warnings, battle management, theater missile defense, among many other things.

The 266th Range Squadron (266th RANS), an active Air National Guard unit tenant assigned to Mountain Home AFB, controls and maintains emitter sites providing our aircrews with electronic simulations of ground-based air defense threats within the 7,412-square mile operational training range located in southern Idaho called the Mountain Home Range Complex (MHRC).
 
The 390th Electronic Combat Squadron (390th ECS) Wild Boars are located at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington. The Wild Boars operate as a geographically separated unit (GSU) attached to the 366th Operations Group. They're responsible for the suppression of enemy air defenses in support of expeditionary aircraft and ground troops by disrupting enemy electronic activity and obtaining tactical electronic intelligence.

The "Gunfighter" Nickname Origin

We earned our distinguished nickname in 1967 when the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing was stationed at Da Nang Air Base, Vietnam. Aircrew were missing opportunities to shoot down enemy aircraft because there were no machine guns installed on the F-4C Phantom II and it's missiles were ineffective at short ranges. However, wing aircrew and maintainers came up with a solution to mount 20-millimeter Gatling gun pods on the F-4C's. This innovation proved to be successful and resulted in the wing earning a Presidential Unit Citation and the nickname of "the Gunfighters."

On November 9,1967, Lieutenant Lance P. Sijan of the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing found himself stranded in the forests of Laos during the Vietnam War. Only moments earlier, Sijan had ejected from his F-4C Phantom II after one of the bombs it carried exploded shortly after its release. Sijan survived but suffered horrible injuries. He had a fractured left leg, a crushed right hand, a head injury, and multiple cuts and bruises. For 45 days, Sijan dragged himself through the Laotian jungle, evading capture and looking for an opening for rescue. Sijan unknowingly dragged himself into the center of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where he fell unconscious and was soon captured. Although barely more than a skeleton, Sijan briefly escaped after overpowering one of his captors before being recaptured a few hours later. While held in a temporary prison, Sijan suffered severe torture but refused to give up any information. By time Sijan arrived at Hoa Lo Prison, infamously known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” he had come down with pneumonia weakening him further. Even then, Sijan continued to plan an escape. He never had another opportunity. Sijan died from a combination of pneumonia and his injuries on January 22, 1968. Sijan’s bravery led the United States to award him the Congressional Medal of Honor on March 4, 1976. Sijan became the first U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and the only Gunfighter to receive the medal.

History of the Wing

The rich history of the 366th Fighter Wing stretches back to the U.S. entry into World War II through its connection to the 366th Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces that stood up on June 10, 1943. Between March 1944 and Nazi Germany’s defeat in May 1945, the group took part in aerial support for ground operations in Europe, including Operation Overlord, Operation Cobra, and the Battle of the Bulge. The group even received a Distinguished Unit Citation for preventing a German ambush of a U.S. armored column outside St. Lo, France, on July 11, 1944. After the war ended, the 366th Fighter Group inactivated on August 20, 1946.

The 366 FW officially joined the U.S. Air Force on January 1, 1953, when it stood up as the 366th Fighter-Bomber Wing before being redesignated the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) in 1958 and then inactivated once again in April 1959. Three years later, the Air Force reactivated the 366 TFW at Chaumont Air Base, France, in April 1962, marking the first time the United States performed a peacetime activation of a wing at an overseas location. The 366 TFW remained in France until July 1963 when it transferred to Holloman AFB, New Mexico, to fly the F-4C Phantom II.

By late 1965, the 366 TFW began deploying to South Vietnam, where it flew out of Da Nang Air Base throughout the Vietnam War. Between 1966 and 1971, the 366 TFW scored 19 confirmed MiG kills in the conflict, including numerous with a 20-millimeter Gatling gun pod. This success led to the wing being awarded a Presidential Unit Citation in 1971 and receiving the nickname “The Gunfighters.” On October 31, 1972, the Gunfighters moved to its current home, Mountain Home AFB, where the wing took over the F-111 and, eventually, EF-111 mission. The wing’s EF-111s provided electronic warfare capabilities to U.S. forces during Operation Just Cause in 1989 and Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in 1990–1991.

In 1991, the Air Force announced that the 366 TFW was redesignated as the 366th Wing, the Air Force’s first composite wing, which stood up on March 11, 1992. Between 1992 and April 1997, the wing consisted of F-16C Fighting Falcon, F-15C Eagle, and F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets, B-1B Lancer bombers, and KC-135R air refuelers, providing the Air Force with a single “air intervention” wing throughout the 1990s. After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the Gunfighters took the lead in striking Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom. In the first months of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Gunfighters flew nearly 1,000 sorties and dropped 7.6 million pounds of bombs, the most out of any unit. The 366th also deployed over 1,400 Gunfighters, the most in the entire Air Force.

Operation Enduring Freedom marked the end of the composite wing experiment when the Air Force reallocated the wing’s KC-135s to McConnell AFB, Kansas, and its B-1Bs to Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, in 2002. Now only consisting of only fighter squadrons, the Wing received a new redesignation as the 366th Fighter Wing (FW) on September 30, 2002. The 366 FW continued its operations in Southwest Asia during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. By March 2007, the wing went through another full transformation, transitioning from flying three fighter airframes to flying the F-15E Strike Eagle only. In 2009, Mountain Home added the Peace Carvin V program to its mission to assist the Republic of Singapore Air Force in training its pilots who fly a variation of the Strike Eagle. Additionally, one of the wing’s squadrons moved to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Washington, in 2010 to assist the U.S. Navy’s electronic warfare mission.

Throughout the 2010s, the Gunfighters continued their support of U.S. forces and allies abroad by participating in numerous deployments to Southwest Asia and the Indo-Pacific. Since 2010, the 366 FW has experienced additional reorganizations that experiment with new concepts within the Air Force. Remaining at the forefront of Air Force innovation, the 366 FW remains one of the most significant Air Combat Command units in the United States.

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