The 38th Bomb Group was activated on January 15, 1941 and was equipped with Martin B-26 Marauder aircraft. In January of 1942, they were ordered to proceed to San Francisco for shipment to Australia and the ground echelon on a troop ship arrived there at the end of February 1942. Two squadrons of the air echelon participated in the Battle of Midway and were subsequently absorbed into the 7th Air Force. The two remaining squadrons, the 71st and 405th, moved from the Melbourne area to Charter Towers, Queensland in August 1942. They had by that time exchanged their B-26s for North American B-25 Mitchell bombers.
They flew their first combat mission on September 15, 1942. Staging out of Horn Island, Queensland, twelve airplanes took off to attack Buna and Salamaua on the northeast coast of New Guinea. By November of 1942, they had moved their base to Port Moresby, New Guinea and over time switched between several of the airfields there. As the enemy was pushed to the north and west, they made several more moves to new base areas. Two additional squadrons, the 822nd and 823rd, were added in June 1943 to bring them to full group strength.
The map at the top of the page is not intended to show every individual mission target visited by the 38th Bomb Group. Instead, it was fashioned to provide a representation of the wide area in which they operated from September 1942 through the end of the war. The combat narratives in the individual squadron Unit Histories are not complete, but mapping all the available mission data could provide a thorough depiction of their participation in the war in the Pacific.