Central Air Defense Force

The Central Air Defense Force (CADF) is an inactive Air Defense Command being stationed at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base, Missouri. It was inactivated on July 1, 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 (ConAC) reorganized Air Defense Command when it became an operating agency. Air defense units within the Continental United States (CONUS) 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 (CADF) 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 Canadian 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 Canadian 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 (SAGE) system.

Lineage

• Constituted as Central Air Defense Force (CADF) on 5 February 1951

Activated on 1 March 1951

Inactivated on 1 July 1960

Assignments

• Air Defense Command, 1 February 1951 – 1 July 1960

Stations

• Kansas City, Missouri, 5 February 1951
• Grandview AFB, Missouri, 24 February 1954

Site re-designated: Richards-Gebaur AFB, Missouri, 27 April 1957 – July 1, 1960

Components

Air Divisions