page_title: 839th Bombardment Squadron
section_title: Heavy Bombardment Squadron
hierarchical_section_title: 839th Bombardment Squadron / History / Heavy Bombardment Squadron
caption_attribution_description: Boeing B-17G-75-BO Fortress 43-38001 487bg 836bs
context_page_description: The 839th Bombardment Squadron is an inactive United States Army Air Forces unit. It was activated in January 1941 as the 79th 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 8th Antisubmarine Squadron.
  After the Navy assumed the unit's mission, it moved to New Mexico, where it formed the cadre for and trained as a Consolidated B-24 Liberator unit, and deployed with its planes to the European Theater of Operations. It was briefly withdrawn from combat when the squadron converted to Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses, and then continued combat with the 487th Bombardment Group. Following V-E Day it returned to Drew Field, Florida, where it was inactivated on 7 November 1945.
context_section_description: The squadron moved to Pueblo Army Air Base, Colorado in September 1943, where it formed the cadre for the 487th Bombardment Group, a newly formed Consolidated B-24 Liberator group that was organizing at Bruning Army Air Field, Nebraska.  The following month, the squadron was redesignated the 839th Bombardment Squadron and was assigned to the 487th Group.  The squadron trained with Liberators until March 1944, when it departed for the European Theater of Operations.  The ground echelon left Alamogordo Army Air Field, New Mexico on 10 March 1944 for the port of embarkation at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, sailing on the SS Duchess of Bedford and arrived in Great Britain on 3 April.  The air echelon departed via the southern ferry route on 23 March.
  The squadron arrived at RAF Lavenham, its base in England, on 4 April 1944, with the air echelon arriving between 13 and 17 April.  The 839th entered combat on 7 May 1944, bombing airfields in Normandy in preparation for Operation Overlord.  During the landings, the squadron struck coastal defenses, road junctions, bridges and rolling stock.  It supported British troops near Caen by attacking German troops and artillery redoubts and made similar attacks to support troops assaulting Brest.  It provided support for Operation Market Garden, the attempt to seize bridgeheads across the Rhine River near Arnhem and Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
  Because of its involvement with tactical operations, the squadron engaged in only limited strategic operations through August 1944. On 19 July 1944, the squadron was taken off combat operations, along with other units of the 92d Combat Bombardment Wing, to convert from the Liberator to the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, in a move that would transform the 3d Bombardment Division to an all Flying Fortress organization. After completing the transition to the B-17 on 1 August 1944, the unit began to focus on strategic targets until March 1945.  It attacked oil refineries in Merseburg, Mannheim and Dulmen; factories in Nuremberg, Hanover and Berlin; and marshalling yards in Köln, Münster, Hamm and Neumunster.
  The squadron was diverted from the strategic bombing campaign to support ground troops during the Battle of the Bulge from December 1944 to January 1945.  It also flew interdiction missions during the Allied crossings of the Rhine and final thrust across Germany.  It flew its last combat mission on 21 April 1945.
  The squadron remained in England after V-E Day.  The air echelon began to fly their B-17s back to the United States in the last week of July, while the rest of  the unit returned to the United States on the RMS Queen Elizabeth.  It reassembled at Drew Field, Florida in September and was inactivated there on 7 November 1945.
caption: 487th Bombardment Group B-17s
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