page_title: 835th Bombardment Squadron
section_title: Antisubmarine Warfare
hierarchical_section_title: 835th Bombardment Squadron / History / Antisubmarine Warfare
caption_attribution_description: English: Douglas B-18B (SN 37-530, originally a B-18A) with the MAD tail boom
context_page_description: The 835th Bombardment Squadron is an inactive United States Army Air Forces unit. It was activated in January 1941 as the 80th Bombardment Squadron and equipped with Douglas A-20 Havoc light bombers. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor the squadron began to fly antisubmarine patrols off the Atlantic coast and over the Caribbean Sea, becoming the 9th Antisubmarine Squadron.
  After the Navy assumed the unit's mission in 1943, it moved to Arizona, where it trained as a Consolidated B-24 Liberator unit, and deployed with its planes to the European Theater of Operations, entering combat in the strategic bombing campaign against Germany on 7 May 1944. In July 1944, the squadron converted to Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses, continuing combat with the 486th Bombardment Group until April 1945. Following V-E Day it returned to Drew Field, Florida, where it was inactivated on 7 November 1945.
context_section_description: The squadron was organized at Army Air Base, Savannah, Georgia in January 1941 as the 80th Bombardment Squadron, one of the original squadrons of the 45th Bombardment Group and equipped with Douglas A-20 Havocs (along with a few DB-7s, an export version of the A-20).  In June the 80th moved with the group to Army Air Base, Manchester, New Hampshire.
  Following the attack on Pearl Harbor the squadron began flying antisubmarine patrols off the Atlantic coast.  In 1942, it converted to the Douglas B-18 Bolo, which was equipped with radar for the antisubmarine mission.  The squadron moved to Dover Army Air Field, Delaware in April 1942 and to Miami Army Air Field, Florida in July.
  In October 1942, the Army Air Forces organized its antisubmarine forces into the single Army Air Forces Antisubmarine Command, which established the 26th Antisubmarine Wing the following month to control its forces operating over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.  The command's bombardment group headquarters, including the 45th, were inactivated and the squadron, now designated the 9th Antisubmarine Squadron, was assigned directly to the 26th Wing.   
  By the fall of 1942, the U-boat threat along the Atlantic coast had substantially diminished, but German wolfpacks were attacking merchant shipping in the waters near Trinidad.  In November, the squadron moved seven radar-equipped B-18B and three B-18C Bolos, to Edinburgh Field, where it joined elements of the 25th Bombardment Group, a Sixth Air Force unit, that was also engaged in antisubmarine patrols.  They remained there until March 1943, when the 9th returned to its base in Miami.  
  In July 1943, the AAF and Navy reached an agreement to transfer the coastal antisubmarine mission to the Navy. This mission transfer also included an exchange of AAF long-range bombers equipped for antisubmarine warfare for Navy Consolidated B-24 Liberators without such equipment.
caption: Douglas B-18B equipped for antisubmarine warfare
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