Central Air Defense Force
The Central Air Defense Force is an inactive United States Air Force organization. Its last assignment was with Air Defense Command being stationed at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base, Missouri. It was inactivated on 1 July 1960.
History
CADF was an intermediate-level command and control organization of Air Defense Command. Its origins date to 1 March 1949 when Continental Air Command reorganized Air Defense Command when it became an operating agency. Air defense units within the Continental United States were given to the Eastern and Western Air Defense Liaison Groups, with Western and Eastern Air Defense Forces activated on 1 September 1949.Central Air Defense Force was activated as a third subordinate region under the re-established Air Defense Command in February 1951 to better organize ADC units in the Central and Southeast United States, its initial region being defined in the west as the area east of the 102nd degree of longitude, from the Canada–US border in the north to the Rio Grande border between the United States and Mexico in the south. The eastern boundary of the CADF was the area west of the 90th degree of longitude from the Michigan shoreline of Lake Superior south to the point of the Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee state boundaries, and eastward to the Atlantic Ocean coastline along the Tennessee–Kentucky and Virginia–North Carolina border, with all areas south and west of those boundaries.
The delineation was again adjusted in March 1956 to the region generally to the east of the 114th degree of longitude, roughly along the eastern borders of Idaho, Nevada and California from the Canada–US border in the north to the Mexican border in the south. The southeast region east of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico was reassigned to EADF.
Central Air Defense Force was inactivated on 1 July 1960, with its assigned units reassigned either to 29th, 30th or 33rd Air Divisions, or to the new Air Defense Sectors created with the advent of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment system.
Lineage
- Constituted as Central Air Defense Force on 5 February 1951
Assignments
- Air Defense Command, 1 February 1951 – 1 July 1960
Stations
- Kansas City, Missouri, 5 February 1951
- Grandview AFB, Missouri, 24 February 1954
Components
Air Divisions
- 20th Air Division
- 29th Air Division
- 31st Air Division
- 33d Air Division
- 34th Air Division
- 35th Air Division
Wings
Groups
- 153d Aircraft Control and Warning Group
- 159th Aircraft Control and Warning Group
- 161st Aircraft Control and Warning Group
- 543d Aircraft Control and Warning Group
- 4676th Air Defense Group