The Matchcover Storyteller

If you look at the matchcover that goes with this note, you might prepare yourself for a wee bit of history but without contemporary relevance.  It turns out there is some  —  it’ll come later.   The other thing about this Royal Flash Billboard 40-strike is that you don’t see many celebrating one specific unit, especially air force.   Oh, sure, the Army ones have divisions and whole armies on them, but across the U.S. Armed Forces, most of these identify bases, commands and schools.  

So let’s start with the history:

The 56th Fighter Wing was authorized in August of 1947 at Selfridge Field north of Detroit, Michigan.  The United States Air Force was formally created one month later and the field became Selfridge AFB as on this matchcover.  It was part of an experiment putting all combat units and all support groups under one command in a single wing.  

 

Its first operational aircraft was the Lockheed P-80 shooting Star (depicted on the matchcover reverse).  That plane itself was the first jet fighter of the USAF, built in 1943 and operational without any combat.  In fact, 11 months after its creation, the 56thFighter Wing flew the first jet fighter route from North America to Europe with 16 of its Shooting Stars!

(By the way, a fighter wing consists of multiple squadrons and up to 72 aircraft; personnel can number in the thousands.)

 

In 1950 the wing switched to the F-86 Sabre and became part of the Strategic Air Command focusing on air defense of North America.   As Air Defense Command underwent sweeping changes through these years, the 56th was deactivated late in 1950 and then re-activated 9 years later.  Now it flew F-101 Voodoos, and in 1960 kind of bounced around a couple of Michigan air bases in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It was off to Thailand in 1967 for the Vietnam War.  If you wish, I’ll let you explore that history of name changes, operational aircraft changes and variety of missions.  For the initiated, it is interesting reading.   Then, in 1975, it was flying F4-Phantoms (my personal favorite!) as the 56th Tactical Fighter wing out of MacDilll AFB in Florida.  And by 1994 the 56th was flying F-16s and moved to Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix, Arizona, where it lives today.  At Luke, it became an F-16 training wing into the 21st century.

 

Today’s relevance?  The 56th is today part of the Air Force Air Education and Training Command and flies (and trains) not only the F-16 Fighting Falcon but now the Lockheed F-35 LightningII.  In fact, today the 56th is the largest single F-35 wing in the world  — a point perhaps more relevant if we consider how in demand this aircraft is in air forces around the globe!  (Oh and by the way, Selfridge, where all this started, dates back to 1916 but is today an Air National Guard Base.  It has a nice museum with aircraft that opens for the season in April 2026.

 

Just a note  —  I only came across this cover working through a nice stack of Army Air Force 40s and was intrigued by the quite specific unit designation.   I also found one for the 4th Ferrying Group that I need to explore and maybe now all of us might want to take a closer look at who and what is on all these  Army Air Corps, Army Air Force and USAF covers!