Group on 20 July. It was the core of what would eventually become the 376th Bombardment Group of Ninth Air Force, which was transferred to RAF Abu Sueir, Egypt on 12 November. B-17s would be flown on combat missions from RAF Lydda and RAF El Fayid, Egypt, attacking the harbor at Tobruk, Libya seven times with day and night raids throughout July, continually raiding the harbor shipping and disrupting Axis storage areas. It is believed that the Fortresses were sent to the secret Gura Army Air Base, Eritrea (Project 19) in August for depot-level maintenance, which was not possible at the British bases and had which been deferred since the beginning of the war in December. The B-17Es would not engage in combat again until raids on Tobruk began again on 12 October, and attacking a coastal road near Bardia, Libya on 20 October after a mission against Tobruk was cancelled due to cloud cover. They were also engaged in attacking harbor facilities and Axis naval targets on Crete and Benghazi, Libya through which Afrika Korps supplies were landed. The B-17s made a final raid against installations at Sousse, Tunisia before being taken out of front-line service with the arrival of newer B-24 and B-25 units from the United States. Tenth Air Force operations Reequipped with Consolidated B-24D Liberators the 9th was reassigned back to Tenth Air Force in India, where for the balance of the war, it carried out long distance heavy bomb raids over Japanese targets primarily in Burma, Thailand and French Indochina; although it also attacked Japanese targets in southeastern China attacking airfields, fuel and supply dumps, locomotive works, railways, bridges, docks, warehouses, shipping, and troop concentrations in Burma and struck oil refineries in Thailand, power plants in China and enemy shipping in the Andaman Sea. Ceased bombing operations in late May 1945 and was attached to Air Transport Command to haul gasoline from India over the Hump to China. The squadron demobilized in India, leaving B-24s to Indian Colonial forces, inactivated as an administrative unit in the United States in early 1946. Strategic Air Command B-29 Superfortress era Nine months after the 9th was inactivated following World War II, it was reactivated and assigned to the 7th Bombardment Group at Fort Worth Army Air Field, Texas, on 1 October 1946. Training began in the Boeing B-29 Superfortress in November 1946 under the standards established by Strategic