[2] On 15 September of that year, it was re-formed, with its headquarters at Woodham Mortimer, and detachments at Rochford, Stow Maries and Goldhanger, all in Essex.

[4][5] Its responsibilities included defending London against aerial attack,[4] both by German Zeppelins at night and by aircraft during the day.

[9] On the night of 16/17 June 1917, one of the squadron's B.E.12s, flown by Lieutenant Pierce Watkins, attacked the Zeppelin L48, which caught fire and crashed.

While the airship was also attacked almost simultaneously by an F.E.2 and a DH.2 from the Orfordness experimental station, Watkin was officially given sole credit for shooting down L48.

It re-equipped with Vickers Wellingtons in May 1939, retaining them at the outbreak of World War II,[2][15] when it formed part of 3 Group.

The formation came under heavy attack by German fighters, with five out of 37 Squadron's six Wellingtons shot down, with 21 men killed.

[15][19] In November 1940, the squadron moved to the Middle East, with the squadron's aircraft being flown via Malta, from where they flew a few missions before arriving in Egypt on 14 November, with one of its crews claiming an Italian seaplane shot down on the ferry flight from Malta to Egypt.

[2][20] The squadrons ground crew were sent to Egypt by ship, being ferried from Gibraltar to Alexandria aboard the cruiser HMS Manchester, which took part in the Battle of Cape Spartivento on 27 November and came under air attack the next day before reaching Egypt and disembarking the squadron's personnel.

[32] The remainder of the squadron, meanwhile, continued to fly raids against German and Italian airfields in southern Greece and the Dodecanese.

[34] From 18 June the RAF's Egypt-based Wellington squadrons, including 37, carried out attacks on Aleppo and Beirut as part of the Syria–Lebanon campaign.

[40] On the night of 1/2 March, Malta-based Wellingtons of the squadron attacked Tripoli harbour, hitting and damaging the 5324 GRT freighter Monginevro.

[53] The squadron flew its last missions of the Second World War on the night of 25/26 April 1945, against marshalling yards North West of Salzburg, Austria.

[56][58] It flew in support of the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956 (the Suez Crisis), and in July 1957 the squadron moved to RAF Khormaksar in Aden, for patrols over the Red Sea and Indian Ocean,[56] with a secondary role of air support, including bombing fortified positions and strafing using the Shackleton's nose-mounted guns in counterinsurgency operations during the Aden Emergency.

[61] In 1961 the squadron flew in support of Operation Vantage, the British response to Iraqi threats against Kuwait,[62] and from 1966, as a result of Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, supplied regular detachments to Mahajanga in Madagascar as part of the Beira Patrol, a British blockade of ships carrying oil to Rhodesia via Mozambique.