Fort Bell Army Airfield

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The base built by the US Army as Fort Bell and Kindley Field during the Second World War, as it appeared in 2004.

USAAF, Fort Bell and Kindley Field was a USAAF airfield in Bermuda from 1941 to 1948.

[edit] History

Prior to American entry into the Second World War, the Governments of the United kingdom and USA lead by Prime minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt came to an agreement exchanging a number of obsolete ex-US Naval destroyers for 99-year base rights in a number of British Empire West Indian territories and Newfoundland This was known as the destroyers for bases deal.

St. David's, in 1676. The shape of St. David's Island, and of Castle Harbour (originally Southampton Harbour), was radically altered by the construction of the airfield, which began in 1941.

As Bermuda had not been party to the agreement, the arrival of US engineers in 1941 came as rather a surprise to many in Bermuda. The US engineers begin surveying the colony for the construction of an airfield that was envisioned as taking over most of the West End of the Island. Frantic protests by the Governor and local politicians led to those plans being revised. The US Army would build an airfield at the North of Castle Harbour. The US Navy would build a flying boat station at the West End.

St. David's Island, after the construction of the airfield.

The airfield was intended to be a joint US Army/Royal Air Force facility, to be used by both primarily as a staging point for trans-Atlantic flights by landplanes. When the US Army occupied the area, it created Fort Bell. The next two years were spent levelling Longbird Island, and smaller islands at the North of Castle Harbour, infilling waterways and part of the harbour to make a land-mass contiguous with St. David's Island. This added 750 acres (304 ha) to Bermuda's land mass, bringing the total area of the base to 1,165 acres (471 ha). The airfield was completed in 1943, and known as Kindley Field after the Great War aviator Field E. Kindley. Most of the base was taken up by the US Army Air Forces. The Western end of the airfield was taken up by the RAF. RAF Air Transport Command, formerly based at Darrell's Island, re-located to the landplane base, leaving only RAF Ferry Command operating on Darrell's.

After the end of the Second World War, the RAF closed its facilities in Bermuda. The Head of RAF forces in Bermuda, Wing Commander Mo Ware, was loaned to the Colonial Government to oversee the conversion of the RAF facility at Kindley Field into a Civil Air Terminal as the commercial flying boats which had provided the island's civil air links began to be superseded by landplanes, which could not operate from Darrell's Island. Mo Ware ultimately remained with the Colonial Government, after leaving the RAF, heading up the Civil Aviation department until his retirement.

In 1947, the US Army Air Forces were separated from the US Army to form the independent US Air Force (USAF). The base was then renamed Kindley Air Force Base, later becoming Naval Air Station Bermuda from 1970-1995 before being turned over the Bermuda Government, which operates it, today, as the Bermuda International Airport (although it is still commonly known as Kindley Field).