World War II Organization The unit was first organized as the
1st Sea-Search Attack Group (Medium) at
Langley Field, Virginia six months after the United States entered
World War II on 17 June 1942 and assigned directly to Headquarters,
Army Air Forces. Its mission was to test equipment and develop techniques and tactics for aerial use against submarines and surface vessels. In addition to its test mission, the group also flew
antisubmarine patrols. The group was initially assigned a single
squadron, the
2d Sea-Search Attack Squadron (Medium). The group and squadron were formed from a
cadre of crews who had received training on Air to Surface Vessel (ASV) radars from scientists at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Radiation Laboratory, which had installed radars in their
Douglas B-18 Bolo aircraft. Although the original intention was to return the planes and crews to their original units, Lt Col W. C. Dolan, the senior officer among the trainees and commander of the
20th Bombardment Squadron, urged that they be combined into a single specialized unit. Col Dolan's suggestion was accepted, and following testing of the ASV radars with the
Navy near
New London, Connecticut, the crews moved to Langley, where they were initially attached to the 20th Squadron. Once the group and its squadron were formed the crews and planes were transferred to it and Col Dolan assumed command. The first ASV-10 radar sets were placed on B-18s, and 90 Bolos were modified with the radars by the end of June 1942. However, B-24 Liberator had a much longer range than the B-18. Equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks, radar and a powerful searchlight, the B-24 was ideal for extended antisubmarine patrols. The USAAF outfitted its first two microwave radar equipped B-24s in September 1942. In December 1942, the 1st Group added a second squadron, the
3d Sea-Search Attack Squadron (Heavy). Although initially equipped with B-18s, the squadron was organized as the unit to which the group's heavy B-24 Liberators would be assigned. World War II era radar sets, particularly the newly operational ones the group tested in its bombers, were difficult to maintain, and scientists assigned to the group for testing found that instead, much of their time was consumed by maintenance of the unit's radar equipment. As a result, the Army Air Forces expanded the 1st to establish a school within the group to train ground personnel in maintenance of radar equipment. The 18th had been acting as the 25th Wing's replacement training unit and was a good fit for the group's expanding training mission. In November, recognizing that the Navy had absorbed the portion of the antisubmarine mission that the Army Air Forces had been performing and the concentration of the unit mission on radar training, rather than antisubmarine work, the "Sea" was dropped from the name and it became the
1st Search Attack Group. while the groups and squadrons on the base were disbanded or inactivated. This resulted in the 1st, along with other units at Langley, being disbanded in April 1944, and being replaced by the 111th AAF Base Unit (Search Attack and Staging), which assumed the group's mission, personnel, and equipment.
Testing The group antisubmarine warfare testing mission relied on cooperation with and assistance from the Navy. The group's location at Langley also gave it access to the research and test facilities of the
National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. In addition, early on the group received two
Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft already equipped with ASV radar,
Consolidated LB-30 Liberators, the export version of the B-24, along with one RAF crew with experience in antisubmarine warfare. In August 1942, the group air echelon was temporarily diverted from testing when it deployed, first to
Key West Naval Air Station, then to
Waller Field on
Trinidad to fly antisubmarine missions in the Caribbean. The first crews returned to Langley in September and operations were continued from Trinidad until 16 October.
Equipment One important device tested by the group was the
magnetic anomaly detector (MAD). MAD could sense changes in the
Earth's magnetic field, as could be produced by a submarine's steel hull. Aircraft outfitted with this device would patrol in an area where a submarine had been spotted but had submerged. Combined with the use of
sonobuoys to listen for the sounds of a submarine, MAD provided a high probability of conducting a successful attack. The group also helped develop the
radar altimeter, or absolute altimeter. This device used a microwave radar to determine an aircraft's exact altitude above the surface within ten feet. This altimeter permitted antisubmarine aircraft to fly safely as low as 50 feet above the surface. Low altitude attacks substantially improved the chances of destroying the target submarine. This device became standard equipment on Army Air Forces antisubmarine aircraft by 1943. LORAN transmitters, located at known points allowed an antisubmarine aircraft to receive signals from three stations, allowing the aircraft to pinpoint its location to within four miles as far as 1,500 miles from the transmitters. LORAN permitted efficient control of converging air and surface forces for a coordinated attack. Using its B-18s and B-24s, the 1st Group trained combat crews in the tactics to employ the equipment it had tested. Tactic included routine aerial patrol of waters in which an enemy threat might exist, air escort of convoys and intensive patrol of an area in which submarines had been spotted. The Army Air Forces termed this third operation a "killer hunt." At various times, each of these tactics had a place in the antisubmarine war. On 9 July 1943, the Army Air Forces agreed to the transfer of its antisubmarine mission to the Navy's
Tenth Fleet. The 1st Group became concerned primarily with radar training for combat crews until disbanding in April 1944. As a training unit, assignment directly to Headquarters, Army Air Forces was no longer a requirement and the group became part of
First Air Force. The three squadrons conducted specialized training, the 2d in low altitude bombing, the 3d in H2X radar operations with the B-24, and the 4th in H2X installed in B-17s.
Reactivation as an intelligence unit In 1985, as part of a project by the
United States Air Force to revive disbanded World War II units, the group was reconstituted as the
365th Electronic Warfare Group, but the group was not reactivated until February 2015 as the
365th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group at
Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. It added intelligence units at two other bases in 2016. ==Lineage==