The 7499th Support Group is an inactive United States Air Force organization. Its last assignment was with the United States Air Forces in Europe, being stationed at Wiesbaden Army Airfield, West Germany. It was inactivated on 30 June 1974. Its mission was resumed by the 7575th Operations Group, which operated from Rhein-Main Air Base, West Germany from 1 July 1977 until its inactivation on 31 March 1991.
History
The 7499th participated in overt and covert reconnaissance throughout the European theater during the Cold War and reported directly to Headquarters USAFE. The unit was initially formed as a squadron in 1948, first at Furstenfeldbruck AB, Germany. By 1955, with the pending inactivation of the Air Resupply And Communications Service 582d Air Resupply Group at RAF Molesworth, England, the unit was expanded to a group level and moved to Wiesbaden AB.
Origins
The unit's origins begin on 9 August 1946, when an Army Air Forces C-47 Skytrain departed Tulln Air Base near Vienna, Austria, on a scheduled courier run that would take it to Venice, Italy, then south to Rome. These flights were routine, and this aircraft had three passengers besides the crew and cargo. As the C-47 flew toward Venice, it encountered heavy weather, including an undercast, and, unknown to its crew, blundered into Yugoslav airspace for several minutes. Before long Yugoslav Yak-3 fighters came on the scene and shot the C-47 down. The pilot skillfully crash-landed and all the people aboard survived but were interned. This caused an immediate uproar from the US government, and stern statements were issued to Yugoslav prime minister Josip Broz (Tito) about immediate release and access to the crash site. Talks were underway when, on 19 August, incredibly, almost the same exact event occurred again. Another C-47 courier aircraft was shot down by Yugoslav fighters in the same area. This time the crew was not so fortunate and all aboard perished.
Under threat of US cutoff of aid to Yugoslavia, Tito yielded, the interned Americans were released, and some compensation paid to the next-of-kin of the dead personnel. Relative calm ensued between the US and Yugoslavia, but a question lingered in the minds of officials in USAFE Headquarters at Wiesbaden AB, Germany. How did those Yugoslav fighters, twice, find those C-47s in bad weather and shoot them down?
USAFE acquired an RB-17 Flying Fortress from a photo-mapping unit, Detachment A of the 10th Reconnaissance Group at Fürth Airfield, Germany. These aircraft were in Europe as part of Project Casey Jones, an attempt to photomap as much of the world as possible to create maps and charts for use in future contingencies, and installed Electronic Countermeasures equipment in it. The B-17 was flown carefully along the border near where the C-47s had been shot down, making sure it did not infringe Yugoslav airspace. By luck, on the very first mission, the Yugoslavs cooperated and turned on their radar and began tracking it. The equipment picked up the familiar signals from a German Würzburg radar on about 560 MHz and took bearings, dozens of them, all of which cut at the same point. Where the bearings crossed there had been a German radar school during the war. Obviously the Yugoslavs had put into service one or more of the old German radars.
This mission was so successful that USAFE directed that further electronic "ferret" missions be flown along the border with the Soviet zones of Germany and Austria, as well as over the Baltic Sea, looking for Soviet radar stations. Over the next several years these aircraft detected a gradual Soviet radar buildup in their zones. During the Berlin Airlift 1948–49, the B-17s would fly occasional missions in the Berlin Air Corridor, using call signs making them appear as airlift C-54s ("Big Willie"). They flew only at night and did not land at Tempelhof airfield, declaring emergencies with "landing gear problems" and thus exiting to the west without Soviet observers seeing them.
Thus began the ELINT mission. Detachment A would go on to join a flight of the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron (specializing in photo recon) on 26 March 1947 and move to Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, Germany. Then came the Berlin Airlift, in June 1948. As part of the collection operation some C-47s and RB-26 Invaders were acquired and modified with cameras. They occasionally flew as part of the airlift stream, diligently collecting photography. A few B-17 ELINT flights were also made in the Berlin Air Corridors, but only at night.