1 September 1942: Creation of the Groupe de Chasse Normandie n° III (GC Normandie 3) in Riyaq, Lebanon. 7 February 1944: GC Normandie 3 becomes the Régiment de Chasse Normandie (RC Normandie), with four escadrilles. 21 July 1944: The Régiment de Chasse Normandie receives the designation Niémen , becoming the Régiment de Chasse Normandie-Niémen (RC Normandie-Niémen). 1953: RC Normandie-Niémen is split in two parts, one becoming the Escadron de Chasse 2/6 Normandie-Niémen 1962: The 6th Escadre de Chasse is dissolved, attached to the 30e Escadre de Chasse, and renamed Escadron de Chasse 2/30 Normandie-Niémen (EC 2/30). 13 October 1993: EC 2/30 is dissolved and renamed Escadron de Chasse 1/13 Normandie-Niémen. 1 July 1995: The squadron returns to its name of Escadron de Chasse 2/30 Normandie-Niémen. 27 June 2008: Renamed Regiment de Chasse 1/30 Normandie-Niémen. 1 September 2011: The squadron becomes Regiment de Chasse 2/30 Normandie-Niémen. Creation When General Charles de Gaulle called on Frenchmen to join him in London in his appeal of 18 June 1940, some went to Great Britain to fight with the Allies. Britain became an important Free French military base and rallying point. When Operation Barbarossa broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 22 June 1941, Soviet authorities declared their representatives of Vichy France persona non grata and asked them to return to France. Colonel Charles Luguet, the air attaché of the Vichy government in Moscow, changed his allegiance to Free French. De Gaulle, believing in the importance of French soldiers serving on all fronts of the war, decided to engage forces on the Eastern Front in 1942. He initially proposed to send a mechanized division (the future 1st Free French Division, under General Edgard de Larminat) to the Eastern front. British opposition and the advice of Free French Air Forces commander Martial Henri Valin, however, made him opt for an air unit instead of a division. Soviet diplomats liaising with the French National Committee, primarily Ambassador Alexander Bogomolov, announced that the Soviet government welcomed French aviators on the Eastern Front. On 19 February 1942, de Gaulle designated Luguet and Captain Albert Mirlesse (under the authority of General Valin} to negotiate with the Soviet Union. Negotiations were lengthy, and Colonel Pougatchev (military chief of the mission in London) opposed a separate French group near the Red Army. Parallel negotiations in Moscow and Kuybyshev, the alternate Soviet capital, were fruitless. On 25 February 1942, the first list of pilots