The 9th Bomb Squadron maintains combat readiness to deliver rapid, decisive airpower on a large scale in support of conventional warfare taskings.

The squadron repairs, services, launches, recovers and inspects 15 B-1B Lancer aircraft capable of sustained intercontinental missions and worldwide deployment/employment from forward operating locations.

After the war had drawn to a close, the unit was moved to Trier, Germany to serve as part of the occupation force under the Third Army on 5 December 1918.

From Australia, it was decided to send the 7th Group to airfields on Java in the Netherlands East Indies to conduct raids on advancing Japanese ground forces and naval targets.

The first of the personnel of the 9th Squadron reached Java on 10 January when three LB-30 Liberators landed at Bandoeng Airport, then moved on the next day to Malang, where V Bomber Command had established a headquarters.

At Khartoum, all the crews were given cholera inoculations, then the planes flew either up to Cairo before turning eastward, or else they were sent straight east across Arabia to Aden and then northeast to Karachi.

On 16 January two B-17Es and three LB-30S took off together from Singosari to attack Japanese air and naval concentrations in the Bay of Manado located at Menado in the Northern Celebes Islands, about 1,000 miles to the northeast.

However, their orders were so unclear that the LB-30 crews could not be sure where the airport was and they had to spend fifteen or twenty minutes searching before they finally found the field at Langoan, beside a lake, about 20 miles south of Menado.

For nine days the crew waited there, with little but coconuts to live on and no proper shelter or medical care for their wounded, hoping that the wrecked plane would be spotted by a friendly aircraft.

The effort to fulfill this program was out of all proportion to the final result; and, as the Japanese continued their moves south through the Dutch East Indies towards Java.

The airdromes were never safe from enemy attack and being without adequate antiaircraft defenses, planes that could not get off on a combat mission early enough to evade the expected raids were sent away from the airfields at the first alarm to spend the day cruising aimlessly up and down off the south coast of Java 100 miles west of Malang, putting hour after hour on the engines and increasing the frustration of the crews.

A fleet of 41 transports originating at Jolo in the Philippines were heading straight down the Makassar Strait and, after a single stop at Balikpapan, moved out across the Java Sea.

To Fifth Bomber Command it became obvious that to continue operations on the present basis, without fighter protection and with their only three practicable airdromes under constant enemy observation, would mean the certain loss of all their planes.

On 29 June 1942, combat crews and ground men from the 9th Squadron departed from India for the Middle East for duty in that theater, to repulse the Nazis then attempting an offensive against the new invasion forces of the U.S.

They were also engaged in attacking harbor facilities and Axis naval targets on Crete and Benghazi, Libya through which Afrika Korps supplies were landed.

[4] Reequipped with Consolidated B-24D Liberators the 9th was reassigned back to Tenth Air Force in India, where for the balance of the war, it carried out long distance heavy bomb raids over Japanese targets primarily in Burma, Thailand and French Indochina; although it also attacked Japanese targets in southeastern China attacking airfields, fuel and supply dumps, locomotive works, railways, bridges, docks, warehouses, shipping, and troop concentrations in Burma and struck oil refineries in Thailand, power plants in China and enemy shipping in the Andaman Sea.

Ceased bombing operations in late May 1945 and was attached to Air Transport Command to haul gasoline from India over the Hump to China.

[4] Nine months after the 9th was inactivated following World War II, it was reactivated and assigned to the 7th Bombardment Group at Fort Worth Army Air Field, Texas, on 1 October 1946.

However, the exercise was pushed back to 6 November and on that date the 9th deployed four B-29s to NAS Barbers Point, Hawaii, en route to Yokota Air Base, Japan.

Flying the massive new bomber, the squadron prepared for a maximum effort flight in July over New York City to celebrate the opening of the Idlewild Airport.

The 7th Bombardment Wing was designated as the lead unit in the formation led by Major General Roger M. Ramey, Eighth Air Force commander.

[4] In August 1950, the unit began participating in simulated bombing missions to Limestone Air Force Base, Maine at the rate of one per day.

The aircraft returned to Carswell on 20 January[4] In June 1951 three bomber crews were assigned to the Convair-operated Air Force Plant 4 at Fort Worth temporarily to participate in the B-36F operational training program.

[4] Special research missions were flown by the 9th in the B-52F from October 1959 to June 1960 with the AGM-28 Hound Dog air-launched cruise missile, although the squadron never employed them on nuclear alert duty.

The squadron first attacked suspected Viet Cong enclaves at Ben Cat, 40 miles north of Saigon, South Vietnam, on 18 June, the operation being supported by Boeing KC-135A Stratotankers stationed at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa.

[8] Prior to the mission, the crews were briefed that a minimum of 2000-3000 (possibly as high as 6000 or more) North Vietnamese Army troops were encamped in the target area.

An investigation later blamed the cause for the mid-air collision on a combination of poor staff planning, extremely unusual and unique weather conditions, forbidden radio communications and an untested air refueling operation.

The next day, the press back in the United States generally derided the raid as being an expensive and costly failure, and it was claimed that only one water buffalo was killed and only 100 pounds of rice were destroyed.

In January 1971, the FB-111A achieved initial operational capability with the 509th Bombardment Wing (393d and 715th Squadrons) at Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire.

Bombing targets in the Hanoi and Haiphong regions of North Vietnam, that mission helped bring the Vietnamese Communists back to the peace talks in Paris and a cease fire was signed on 28 January 1973.