Destroyers for Bases Agreement

In the Destroyers for Bases Agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom on September 2, 1940, fifty mothballed Caldwell, Wickes, and Clemson-class US Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy from the United States Navy in exchange for land rights on British possessions. Generally referred to as the "twelve hundred-ton type" (also known as "flush-deck", or "four-pipers" after their four funnels), the destroyers became the Town-class and were named after towns common to both the United States and Britain.^[1] The agreement was a violation of the official neutral position of the United States.

Background

The Second World War started in September 1939. After the eight month interlude of the Phony War, France and the Low Countries were quickly overrun by the Nazi German Blitzkrieg in the Battle of France in May 1940. This left the United Kingdom and British Empire fighting alone (or almost alone after the Italian attack on Greece that autumn), against Germany and Italy.

The Chiefs of Staff Committee concluded in May that if France collapsed, "we do not think we could continue the war with any chance of success" without "full economic and financial support" from the United States of America.^[2] Although its government was sympathetic to Britain's plight, American public opinion at the time overwhelmingly supported isolationism to avoid US involvement in "another European war". Reflecting this sentiment, Congress had passed the Neutrality Acts three years previously, which banned the shipment or sale of arms from the US to any combatant nation. Additionally, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was further constrained by the upcoming 1940 Presidential election, as his critics sought to portray him as being pro-war.

By late May, following the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk, France, in Operation Dynamo, the Royal Navy was in immediate need of ships, especially as they were now fighting the Battle of the Atlantic in which German U-boats threatened Britain's supplies of food and other resources essential to the war effort.

With German troops advancing rapidly into France and many in the US Government convinced that the defeat of France and Britain was imminent, the United States sent a proposal to the United Kingdom through the British Ambassador, the Marquess of Lothian, for an American lease of airfields on Trinidad, Bermuda, and Newfoundland.^[3] British Prime Minister Winston Churchill initially rejected the offer on May 27 unless Britain received something immediate in return. On June 1, as the defeat of France loomed, President Roosevelt bypassed the Neutrality Act by declaring as "surplus" many millions of rounds of American ammunition and obsolescent small arms, and authorizing their shipment to the United Kingdom. But Roosevelt rejected Churchill's pleas for destroyers for the Royal Navy.

By August, while Britain and her Empire stood alone against Germany, the American Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy reported from London that a British surrender was "inevitable". Seeking to persuade Roosevelt to send the destroyers, Churchill warned Roosevelt ominously that if Britain were vanquished, its colonial islands close to American shores could become a direct threat to America if they fell into German hands.

The deal

On September 2, 1940, as the Battle of Britain intensified, United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull signaled agreement to the transfer of the warships to the Royal Navy. In exchange, the US was granted land in various British possessions for the establishment of naval or air bases, on ninety-nine-year rent-free leases, on:

• Newfoundland (today part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador)
• Eastern side of the Bahamas
• Southern coast of Jamaica
• Western coast of St. Lucia
• West coast of Trinidad (Gulf of Paria)
• Antigua
• British Guiana (present day Guyana) within fifty miles of Georgetown

The agreement also granted the US air and naval base rights in:

• The Great Sound and Castle Harbour, Bermuda
• South and eastern coasts of Newfoundland

No destroyers were received in exchange for the bases in Bermuda and Newfoundland. Both territories were vital to trans-Atlantic shipping, aviation, and to the Battle of the Atlantic. Although enemy attack on either was unlikely, it could not be discounted, and Britain had been forced to wastefully maintain defensive forces, including the Bermuda Garrison. The deal allowed Britain to hand much of the defence of Bermuda over to the still-neutral US, freeing British forces for redeployment to more active theatres. It also enabled the development of strategic facilities at US expense which British forces would also utilise.

American and British sailors examine depth charges. In the background are US Wickes-class destroyers before their transfer

The Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) each maintained air stations in Bermuda at the start of the war, but these only served flying boats. The RAF station on Darrell's Island served as a staging point for trans-Atlantic flights by RAF Transport Command and RAF Ferry Command, BOAC, and Pan-Am, as well as hosting the Bermuda Flying School, but did not operate maritime patrols. The FAA station on Boaz Island, existed to service aircraft based on vessels operating from or through the Royal Naval Dockyard, but attempted to maintain maritime patrols using pilots from naval ships, RAF Darrell's Island, and the Bermuda Flying School.

The agreement for bases in Bermuda stipulated that the US would, at its own expense, build an airfield, capable of handling large landplanes, which would be operated jointly by the US Army Air Force and the Royal Air Force. The airfield was named Kindley Field (after Field Kindley, an American aviator who fought for Britain during the First World War). RAF Transport Command relocated its operations to the airfield when it was completed in 1943, although RAF Ferry Command remained at Darrell's Island. Prior to this, the US Navy had established the Naval Operating Base at Bermuda's West End. This was a flying boat station, from which maritime patrols were operated for the remainder of the war (the US Navy had actually begun operating such patrols from RAF Darrell's Island, using floatplanes, while waiting for their own base to become operational). The RAF and FAA facilities were closed after the war, leaving only the US air bases in Bermuda. The Naval Operating Base ceased to be an air station in 1965, when its flying boats were replaced by Neptune landplanes, operating from the Kindley Air Force Base (as the former US Army airfield had become). These US air bases were in fact only two of several US military facilities that operated in Bermuda during the Twentieth Century. The United States abandoned many of these bases in 1949 and the remaining few were closed in 1995. The US does retain the right to base military forces in Bermuda and Newfoundland.

The US accepted the "generous action… to enhance the national security of the United States" and immediately transferred in return 50 Caldwell, Wickes, and Clemson-class US Navy destroyers "generally referred to as the twelve hundred-ton type" (also known in references as "flush-deck" destroyers, or "four-pipers" after their four funnels). Forty-three ships initially went to the British Royal Navy and seven to the Royal Canadian Navy. In the Commonwealth navies the ships were renamed after towns, and were therefore known as the Town class, although they had originally belonged to three ship classes: (Caldwell, Wickes, and Clemson). Before the end of the war, nine others also served with the Royal Canadian Navy. Five Towns were manned by crews of the Royal Norwegian Navy, with the survivors later returned to the Royal Navy. HMS Campbeltown was manned by Royal Netherlands Navy sailors before her assignment to ram the drydock gates and sacrifice herself in the St. Nazaire Raid. Nine other destroyers were eventually transferred to the Soviet Navy. Six of the 50 destroyers were lost to U-boats, and three others, including Campbeltown, were destroyed in other circumstances.

Britain had no choice but to accept the deal, but it was so much more advantageous to America than Britain that Churchill's aide John Colville compared it to the USSR's relationship with Finland. The destroyers were in reserve from the massive US World War I shipbuilding program, and many of the vessels required extensive overhaul due to the fact that many were not preserved properly when inactivated; one British admiral called them the "worst destroyers I had ever seen",^[4] and only 30 were in service by May 1941.^[2] Churchill also disliked the deal, but his advisers persuaded the prime minister to merely tell Roosevelt that:^[4]

We have so far only been able to bring a few of your fifty destroyers into action on account of the many defects which they naturally develop when exposed to Atlantic weather after having been laid up so long.^[4]

Roosevelt responded by transferring ten Lake-class coast guard cutters to the Royal Navy in 1941. These United States Coast Guard vessels were ten years newer than the destroyers, and had greater range, making them more useful as anti-submarine convoy escorts.^[5]

The agreement was much more important for being the start of the wartime Anglo-American partnership. Churchill said in Parliament that "these two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage".^[2]

The bases

• Bermuda

Not actually part of the exchange, but the US received base rights here for free, in addition to those that were part of the exchange. The US Naval Operating Base was established in 1940, operating as a flying boat base until 1965 (when the US Navy switched to using landplanes from Kindley Air Force Base). The base continued in use for other purposes as the US Naval Annex until 1995. Construction began at the same time of a US Army Air Force airfield, Kindley Field, attached to Fort Bell, and which later became Kindley AFB. Transferred to the US Navy in 1970, it operated as NAS Bermuda until it was closed in 1995.

• Newfoundland

Several Army Air Force airfields. As with Bermuda, no destroyers or other war material was received in exchange for base rights in Newfoundland.

Pepperrell Airfield (later AFB) (closed August 1961)

Goose Bay Army Airfield (later AFB) (turned over to Canadian Forces, July 1976)

Stephenville Army Airfield (later AFB) (closed December 1966)

McAndrew Army Airfield (McAndrew Air Force Base in 1948; transferred to US Navy, 1955; closed 1994 and eventually transferred to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador for civilian use)

A Naval Air Station

Naval Station Argentia (closed 1994)

Multiple Marine and Army Bases and detachments in support of the above.

British West Indies

• Antigua

A Naval Air Station at Crabbs Peninsula

An Army Air Force airfield (Coolidge Army Airfield (later AFB)) (closed 1949)

• The Bahamas

Naval seaplane base on Exuma Island at George Town.^[6][7][8]

• British Guiana

An Army Air Force airfield (Atkinson Aerodrome (later AFB)) (closed 1949)

A Naval seaplane base near Suddie.

• Jamaica

An Army Air Force airfield (Vernam Army Airfield (later AFB)) (closed 1949)

A Naval Air Station (Little Goat Island) and a Naval facility at Port Royal

• Saint Lucia

An Army Air Force airfield (Beane Army Airfield (later AFB)) (closed 1949)

A Naval Air Station (Gros Islet Bay)

• Trinidad

Two Army Air Force airfields

Waller Army Airfield (later AFB) (closed 1949)

Carlsen Army Airfield (later AFB) (closed 1949)

A Naval Operating Base, a Naval Air Station, blimp base, and a radio station^[9]

The ships

A total of 50 ships were reassigned: 3 Caldwell-class, 27 Wickes-class, and 20 Clemson-class destroyers.

See also

• Banff-class sloops similarly transferred to the Royal Navy in 1941.
• Tizard Mission
• Lend-Lease, a successor agreement loosely modelled on the Destroyers for Bases Agreement.
• Northeast Air Command for airfields in Newfoundland and Labrador

References

Further reading

• ""The New Bases Acquired for old Destroyers"". Guarding the United States and it's Outposts. United States Army Center of Military History. 2000 [1964]. CMH Pub 4-2. 
• STRATEGY: Bases Chosen December 1940 Time article about the bases.
• Naval Bases constructed after the deal

External links

• Text of the agreement
• about the bases in Antigua
• Article in the BBC about the agreement