One of the two geographical Major Commands of the United States Air Force and the component of the United States Indo-Pacific Unified Combat Command, the Pacific Air Forces was officially established on 1 July 1957 with its headquarters at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. But its creation was the end result of a flurry of redesignations and reorganizations designed to placed U.S. air power under a single command during World War II and in the years immediately following its conclusion.
Pacific Air Forces can trace its origins to the establishment of the Far East Air Forces (FEAF) in August 1944, which was given command and control over all the U.S. Army Air Force’s deployed over a massive area in the southwest Pacific. In June 1945, three numbered Air Forces—Fifth, Seventh, and Thirteenth—were assigned to FEAF. Following the Japanese surrender, the FEAR was redesignated as Pacific Air Command, U.S. Army (PACUSA) in December 1945. Units from five numbered Air Forces—the three aforementioned formations plus the Eighth and Twentieth Air Forces—were redeployed at bases stretching from Japan (Tokyo and Okinawa) to the Philippines, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, Guam, and Hawaii.
As the United States looked ahead to a major realignment of its military forces, including the establishment of the Air Force as a distinct branch of the Department of Defense, PACUSA was redesignated as Far East Air Forces in 1947, with three numbered Air Forces under its command by the time of the Korean War: the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Twentieth. Following the signing of the truce that ended fighting on the Korean Peninsula, the FEAF underwent a trio of reorganizations and redesignations between 1954 and 1957. First, in 1954 Pacific Air Force was activated at Hickam Air Force and assigned to FEAF; second, Pacific Air Force was redesignated as Pacific Air Force/FEAF (Rear) in 1956; and finally in 1957 FEAF was redesignated as Pacific Air Forces, with HQ established at Hickam AFB.
Still headquartered at Hickam, Pacific Air Forces currently has command and control over three numbered Air Forces—Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh—and also has operational command over several Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard units in the event they are mobilized for deployment. When these forces augment the Pacific Air Forces active-duty personnel, the command is responsible for some 45,000 personnel.