Former US NAS Bermuda in 2016 скачать в хорошем качестве

Former US NAS Bermuda in 2016

The former United States "Naval Air Station Bermuda" in 2016. The airfield was constructed by the United States Army, which occupied the site in 1941, prior to the entry of the United States into the Second World War. The United States had been granted ninety-nine year leases by the British Government for bases in Bermuda, Newfoundland, and the British West Indies. The West Indian bases were leased in exchange for the loan of destroyers from the United States Government to the British Government. The bases in Bermuda and Newfoundland were leased free of compensation. Britain expected to benefit, however, both by delegating defence of the sea-lanes and British territory in the western North Atlantic and the West Indies to the supposedly still-neutral United States (thereby freeing British forces to be deployed elsewhere), and, in the case of Bermuda and Newfoundland especially, through the utilisation of the airfields constructed at US expense. A civil international airport had been established by Imperial Airways at Darrell's Island, in the Great Sound of Bermuda in 1936, and had been used by Imperial Airways (which subsequently became BOAC) and Pan-American for air service between Bermuda and the United States, and as a staging point for trans-Atlantic air service. Bermuda is an archipelago of more than a hundred islands formed by the southern part of the rim of a volcanic caldera extending above the Atlantic surface. During the Ice Ages, the entire caldera had been above water level, forming a two-hundred square mile island. The twenty-one square miles that remain of this is composed of three of four parallel ridges, resulting in a topography of steep, low hills with shallow inland valleys between the ridge lines. As there is virtually no naturally level ground anywhere in Bermuda, there was no obvious location for a runway and the civil airport on Darrell's Island was utilised only by flying boats and floatplanes that took off from, and alighted on, the Great Sound (local commercial flights by seaplanes had previously operated from Hinson's Island). The Royal Air Force took over Darrell's Island for the duration of the Second World War. Two RAF Commands used RAF Darrell's Island: Transport Command, which moved valuable freight and personnel across the Atlantic; and Ferry Command, which delivered flying boats purchased from manufacturers in the United States to the Air Ministry in Britain. Bermuda was designated as the site where flying boats were tested before acceptance. The Bermuda Flying School also operated from Darrell's Island, training volunteers from the territorial army units in Bermuda as pilots. Those who were successful were discharged and commissioned into the Royal Air Force, often departing Bermuda as aircrew on flying boats being delivered to Britain (the RAF trained too many pilots in response to the Blitz, resulting in the school's closure in 1942). The Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm also operated a Royal Naval Air Station from the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island before the war, with seaplanes hauled ashore via a boatslip in the dockyard. This air station was actually operated by the Royal Air Force until 1939, when the Royal Navy was permitted again to have its own aircraft and aircrews (for the first time since the Royal Naval Air Service had amalgamated with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to become the Royal Air Force in 1918). In 1939, the co-joined Boaz Island and Watford Island (which had been used by the Admiralty to house convict labourers until the 1860s, then as the main camp, or garrison, of the British Army's western military district from the 1860s 'til the 1930s) were redeveloped by the Admiralty with aircraft hangars, tarmac dispersal areas, and slips for the operation of seaplanes, with the "Royal Naval Air Station Bermuda" relocating to there. The US was given leases for two large bases and numerous smaller satellite facilities in 1941. The United States Navy built its Naval Operating Base Bermuda on the western side of the Great Sound. This served both shipping and seaplanes, with the US Navy taking over responsibility for flying anti-submarine air patrols from Bermuda (which had, til then, been performed on an ad-hoc basis by the Royal Navy; RNAS Bermuda was principally a maintenance base for seaplanes carried aboard surface vessels, although a target-towing air squadron would be formed there during the war). Despite the three air stations operating in Bermuda in the early years of the war, there was still no possibility of land planes using the Island til Kindley Field became operational in 1943. This was renamed Kindley Air Force Base in 1948. The increasing range of landplanes made it less useful to the US Air Force. The US Navy replaced its flying boats with landplanes and moved its anti-submarine operations there in 1965, taking over the base in 1970. In 1995, with the end of the Cold War, the base closed.