Carolina, along with the two squadrons stationed with group headquarters at Westover Field, Massachusetts. Its two squadrons at other stations, the 320th and the 442d, remained behind and were reassigned to the 402d Group. These two squadrons were replaced in North Carolina by the 538th and 539th Fighter Squadrons. After arriving in North Carolina, the group resumed a split operation when the 538th and 529th Squadrons moved to Bluethenthal Field, North Carolina after they were organized . The Army Air Forces was finding that standard military units, based on relatively inflexible tables of organization were proving less well adapted to the training mission. Accordingly, it adopted a more functional system in which each of its bases was organized into a separate numbered unit. As a result, in 1944 the group was disbanded as the AAF converted to the AAF Base Unit system. The 123d AAF Base Unit (Replacement Training Unit, Fighter) replaced the group headquarters and squadrons at Seymour Johnson, and the 130th AAF Base Unit (Replacement Training Unit, Fighter) replaced the squadrons at Bluethenthal Field. Cold War The group was reconstituted, redesignated as the 326th Fighter Group (Air Defense) and activated in 1955 as an Air Defense Command (ADC) operational air defense unit at Paine Field, Washington. It absorbed the personnel and equipment of the inactivating 529th Air Defense Group as part of ADC's Project Arrow, which was designed to bring back on the active list the fighter units which had compiled memorable records in the two world wars. The 326th was equipped with Northrop F-89D Scorpions, armed with Mighty Mouse rockets, and became the USAF host unit at Paine. It was assigned a number of support organizations to fulfill its host responsibilities. Its 321st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron assumed the personnel and equipment of the 83d Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, which was transferred to Hamilton Air Force Base, California without personnel or equipment. The group received later model Scorpions and by 1956 was entirely equipped with the F-89H, which could carry AIM-4 Falcons in addition to the unguided Mighty Mouse rockets. It finally equipped with nuclear-capable F-89Js, armed with the AIR-2 Genie and equipped with data link for interception control through the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment system in the spring of 1958. For a brief period in 1960, the group was without an operational element, as the 321st Squadron was discontinued on 1 March and the 64th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, which replaced it, did