In 1942, after the US entered World War II, Barber joined the Army Air Corps where he remained in service through 1945. While there, he was commissioned to write several works for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), including his "Cello Concerto" for Raya Garbousova and his "Second Symphony", a work he later suppressed. Composed in 1943, the symphony was originally titled "Symphony Dedicated to the Air Forces" and was premiered in early 1944 by Serge Koussevitsky and the BSO. Barber revised the symphony in 1947 and it was subsequently published by G. Schirmer in 1950 and recorded the following year by the New Symphony Orchestra of London, conducted by Barber himself. According to some sources, Barber destroyed the score in 1964. Hans Heinsheimer was an eyewitness, and reported that he accompanied Barber to the publisher's office where they collected all the music from the library, and Barber "tore up all these beautifully and expensively copied materials with his own hands". Doubt has been cast on this story, however, on grounds that Heinsheimer, as an executive at G. Schirmer, would have been unlikely to have allowed Barber into the Schirmer offices to watch him "rip apart the music that his company had invested money in publishing". The score was later reconstructed from the instrumental parts, and released in a Vox Box "Stradivari Classics" recording by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Schenck in 1988.