The wing's first day was 1 March 1961, and even its founding had a borrowed quality. Major Wilhelm Meyn officially established it at Nörvenich Air Base, where Jagdbombergeschwader 31 already lived, and about fifty Republic F-84F Thunderstreaks were peeled off from the existing 31st Wing to form its initial fleet. Three days later, on 4 March, an advance party moved north to a new air base being prepared at Hopsten, deep in rural Westphalia. The aircraft themselves stayed at Nörvenich for a few months, then decamped to the NATO range at Decimomannu in Sardinia from April through the end of August. Only on returning did the Thunderstreaks finally land at Hopsten and slide under NATO command on 1 September 1961. The wing's first squadron was formally commissioned that December, with the Inspector of the Air Force, Lieutenant General Josef Kammhuber, doing the honours.

A second squadron was ordered up in January 1962, primarily to take German pilots trained in the United States and re-Europeanise them. Alongside the Thunderstreaks, the new squadron received six Lockheed T-33s and two Piaggio P.149 transports. On 13 March 1962 its coat of arms was approved: a leaping Westphalian horse on a divided shield of blue and red, the blue for the Westphalian sky, the red for the Westphalian earth. That horse would outlive every airframe the wing ever flew. From 1965 the unit converted onto the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. The Thunderstreaks, retired with around 50,000 flight hours and the lives of eight pilots behind them, were sold to Turkey. Under NATO's Flexible Response doctrine, two Starfighters sat permanent Quick Reaction Alert at Hopsten, ready to lift off with nuclear weapons; access to their secure dispersal was tightly restricted. After 1972 the wing reverted to conventional-only weapons.

Conversion to the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II began on 4 February 1975, when the wing commander, Colonel Winfried Schwenke, flew the first aircraft in himself. Although the Phantom was designed as an air-defence fighter and was not nuclear-capable, the Ministry of Defence equipped this Westphalian fighter-bomber wing with them anyway, partly because of the Panavia Tornado's delayed arrival. From July to September 1980, JaboG 36 became the first German wing to deploy to CFB Goose Bay in Labrador for low-level training; every German fast-jet unit followed, every year, until 2006. The fall of the Berlin Wall reshuffled everything. On 1 January 1991 the wing was officially renamed Jagdgeschwader 72 'Westfalen' to take on the air-defence mission over reunified Germany. A planned relocation to Laage to absorb captured East German MiG-29s was first ordered, then cancelled. On 22 April 1993 a wing crew was killed in a flight accident at Goose Bay.

The Air Force Structure 5 plan of 2001 spelled the end. The last alert mission flew on 7 January 2002; the first squadron stood down on 18 January, the second on 31 January. Yet the 2nd Squadron was immediately reactivated the following day, 1 February 2002, as the F-4F Flight Training Center - the home for what was called the Europeanisation of pilots returning from the joint training programme at Holloman Air Force Base in the United States. As the Eurofighter rolled into Luftwaffe service, the need for Phantom pilots evaporated. The Holloman training squadron disbanded on 20 December 2004. A year later, almost to the day, that completely black Phantom with the Westphalian horse on its flanks took off from Hopsten and turned toward Wittmund. Aircraft 37+11 stood guard outside the Richthofen wing's headquarters at Wittmund, where it remained on display, leaving only the leaping horse on patches and squadron memories for those who had known it in the air.