and name painted out for security reasons, passed the Cristobal breakwater at 0125 on 9 June, en route to Guantanamo Bay. Fueling there on 11 June, Anderson got underway the same afternoon, quickly taking up antisubmarine screening station off the port bow of , which she escorted up the eastern seaboard to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, arriving there on 15 June. The respite in port proved brief, however, since Anderson took a departure early on the morning of 19 June. Joined by shortly thereafter, the destroyer stood down the Delaware River, and out into the Atlantic. They joined the following morning, and, later, shortly after noon on 21 June. Together, these ships proceeded out into the central Atlantic on neutrality patrol, cruising almost as far as the Cape Verde Islands, "safeguarding the neutrality of the United States." Their voyage took them almost to the edge of the zones defined in operations orders of April and June 1941. Anderson served as plane guard for Wasp and as an antisubmarine screen for the carrier and for Tuscaloosa during the patrol that ultimately came to an end at Bermuda on Independence Day, 1941. After a brief period in Bermudan waters, a break she utilized for a short stint of close-range battle practice, Anderson took a departure on 12 July for Norfolk, reaching her destination the following day. After getting underway from the Tidewater region for torpedo practice on 17 July, the warship sailed north for Boston, and reached the Boston Navy Yard on the afternoon of 19 July. Anderson then underwent repairs and alterations into early August; during her time in the yard, her number three 5 inch (127 mm) mount was removed to save topside weight and allow the fitting of additional .50 caliber (12.7 mm) machine guns, extensions to her depth charge tracks, and a "Y"-gun (depth charge projector), in addition to two dozen additional depth charges. Thus refitted to better perform the escort role needed in the developing Battle of the Atlantic, she participated in intensive antisubmarine exercises out of Provincetown, Massachusetts, during the latter half of August 1941 before returning to Boston on the 30th. Andersons operations now carried her farther north, as she sailed for Casco Bay, Maine, on 2 September, exercising with Tuscaloosa en route. Assigned to Task Force 15 (TF 15), Anderson steamed as part of the escort force for the first major reinforcement convoy bound