The Los Angeles Fighter Wing was a unit of the United States Army Air Forces. The wing provided air defense of southern California and trained fighter units and pilots. It was stationed at Los Angeles, California, where it was disbanded on 7 June 1944.
History
Along the Pacific coast, Western Defense Command established a "vital air defense zone", extending from the coast approximately inland and to sea. To carry out this mission, Fourth Air Force organized regional air defense wings in August 1942. The Los Angeles Air Defense Wing was organized to provide air defense for the Los Angeles area and train fighter groups and pilots.
The Army Air Forces later found that standard military units like the wing, whose manning was based on relatively inflexible tables of organization were not well adapted to the training mission, even more so to the replacement mission. Accordingly, the Army Air Forces adopted a more functional system in which each base was organized into a separate numbered unit, with similar flexible units established for headquarters.
In this reorganization, the wing's headquarters squadron was replaced by the 410th AAF Base Unit (Fighter Wing) on 1 April 1944. The wing itself was disbanded on 7 July 1944, and the 410th was redescribed as the 410th AAF Base Unit (Air Defense Region). In 1946, it became the 410th AAF Base Unit (Los Angeles Control Group), and was discontinued on 1 January 1947.