page_title: 5th Flying Training Squadron
section_title: Air Defense Command
hierarchical_section_title: 5th Flying Training Squadron / History / Air Defense Command
caption_attribution_description: Four U.S. Air Force Convair F-106A Delta Dart fighters (s/n 58-0793, 59-0002, 59-0005, 59-0006) from the 5th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, fly over Mount Rushmore, South Dakota (USA), on 27 July 1981.
context_page_description: The 5th Flying Training Squadron is part of the United States Air Force's Air Force Reserve Command serving as a reserve associate squadron operating with the 71st Flying Training Wing t Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma. It operates the Raytheon T-1 Jayhawk, Northrop T-38C Talon, and Beechcraft T-6A Texan II aircraft conducting flight training in support of the 71st Operations Group.
context_section_description: It was reactivated in 1946 as a United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) fighter squadron. It was primarily an occupation unit at Schweinfurt Airfield and Bad Kissingen Airfield in Germany.  It was reassigned from USAFE to Air Defense Command (ADC) in June 1947, equipped with Northrop P-61 Black Widows, and stationed at Mitchel Field, New York, to perform air defense of the eastern United States.
  In June 1948 the unit transitioned into North American F-82 Twin Mustangs. In the fall of 1949 the unit moved to McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey. In August 1955 the 5th moved on paper to Suffolk County Air Force Base, New York. In the spring of 1957 the unit transitioned into Convair F-102 Delta Daggers.
  In February 1960 the 5th moved to Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, and transitioned into the Convair F-106 Delta Dart under the 32d Fighter Wing. Although the number of ADC interceptor squadrons remained almost constant in the early 1960s, attrition (and the fact that production lines closed in 1961) caused a gradual drop in the number of planes assigned to typical fighter squadrons, from 24 to typically 18 by 1964 and 12 by 1967.  These reductions resulted in the squadron's parent 32d Fighter Wing's inactivation and the transfer of Minot to Strategic Air Command in July 1962.
  On 22 October 1962, before President John F. Kennedy told Americans that missiles were in place in Cuba, the squadron dispersed one third of its force, equipped with nuclear tipped missiles to Hector Field at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. These planes returned to Minot after the crisis.  In late 1962 the 5th acquired two live lynx kittens ("Spitten" and "Kitten") as mascots, with the assistance of the Minot Daily News, after a farmer had killed their mother.
  In the mid-1980s the 5th converted to the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagles. The F-15s only flew over Minot until the spring of 1988, when the FIS was inactivated.  The lynx den in the squadron was one of the few places where Canada lynx had bred in captivity in the U.S., prompting both the St. Louis and San Diego Zoos to copy it in an attempt to get their own lynx inhabitants to produce offspring. Several generations of lynx flourished there, and after the unit was inactivated, Delta and Dart, twin kitten descendants of the original two Lynx kitten mascots were donated to the Roosevelt Park Zoo in Minot.
caption: 5th FIS F-106As flying past Mt. Rushmore in 1981
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