12th Bomb Group,"The EARTHQUAKERS "

12th Bomb Group,"The EARTHQUAKERS " 12th Bomb Group "Spiritus Omnia Vincet" The 12th Bombardment Group (Light) was activated on 15 January 1941 and Prior to the United States’ entry into World War II the group trained with Douglas B-18 Bolo, B-23 Dragon, and Boeing Stearman aircraft at McChord Field, Washington. They were the only Air Corps combat unit on the Pacific Coast north of the San Francisco Bay area after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and they immediately began flying anti-submarine patrols and watching for signs of an invasion

In February 1942, the group was redesignated the 12th Bombardment Group (Medium) and moved to Esler Field, Louisiana, where it trained with B-25s for duty overseas. In June 1942, while in the United States for a conference with President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill received word that the British Eighth Army had been badly defeated in a tank battle with Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps near Tobruk, Libya, and was in full retreat back toward the Egyptian delta area. He immediately made an urgent plea for military aid to help stop Rommel from over-running Egypt and the Arabian oil fields.