The 319th Special Operations Squadron was first formed on 9 August 1944 as the 319th Troop Carrier Squadron (Commando) and served in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II. It provided airlift support and flew aerial resupply missions in support of various commando units such as Merrill's Marauders and the Chindits and conducted airborne drops and glider operations for Allied troops in Burma, central China, and French Indochina in the last year of World War II. Over the next quarter century it was inactivated, reactivated, and redesignated on a number of occasions until it was inactivated (as the 319th Special Operations Squadron) on 15 January 1972 as part of the post-Vietnam War demobilization.