Kindley Air Force Base

Coordinates: 32°21′52.3″N 64°40′53.5″W / 32.364528°N 64.681528°W / 32.364528; -64.681528
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Kindley Air Force Base
St. David's Island, Bermuda
Near St. George's, Bermuda in United States
The former AFB Kindley Field, as it appeared in 1993
St. David's Island, after the construction of the airfield. The airfield encompasses all of the Island.
Kindley Air Force Base is located in Bermuda
Kindley Air Force Base
Kindley Air Force Base
Coordinates32°21′52.3″N 64°40′53.5″W / 32.364528°N 64.681528°W / 32.364528; -64.681528
TypeAir force base
Site information
Owner
Operator
Open to
the public		Yes
ConditionOperational - returned to the Bermudian government for use as
AMSL
Runways
Direction Length and surface
12/30 9,898 feet (3,017 m) Asphalt
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.

Kindley Air Force Base was a United States Air Force base in Bermuda from 1948–1970, having been operated from 1943 to 1948 by the United States Army Air Forces as Kindley Field.

History

Kindley Field, shortly after construction

World War II

Prior to American entry into the

destroyers for bases
deal.

As the

Castle Harbour. The US Navy would build a flying boat
station at the West End

The airfield was intended to be a joint

Field E. Kindley, who had served with the Royal Flying Corps during World War I
), being the airfield within it.

There were two air stations operating in Bermuda at the start of the Second World War, the civil airport on

Naval Air Station
, which—like the British bases—was restricted to use by seaplanes).

The US Army levelled 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

Darrell's Island, re-located to the landplane base, leaving only RAF Ferry Command operating on Darrell's.[2][3][4][5][6]

Postwar use

The US Army was left as the only military establishment on the base after both RAF establishments (at Kindley Field and Darrell's Island) were withdrawn at the end of the war (followed by the closure of most of the Royal Naval Dockyard and withdrawal of the last regular British Army unit in the 1950s), although the RAF (and the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm) has continued to use its end of the field, converted to a Civil Aviation Terminal by the Civil Aviation department of the Bermuda Government (headed by wartime RAF commander Wing Commander Mo Ware), as a staging post for trans-Atlantic flights.

The

United States Army garrisoned Bermuda with ground forces for the remainder of the war, including Fort Bell. Following the end of hostilities, its ground forces were withdrawn, other than those required for the defence of Fort Bell, on 1 January 1946, when US Army Air Transport Command took control of the entire base. The airfield ceased to be distinguished within the base as the name Fort Bell was discontinued and Kindley Field came to be applied to the entire facility.[7]

In 1947, it was decided to separate the

U.S. Army to create a separate air service, the United States Air Force (USAF). Fort Bell lost its distinction from Kindley Field at that time and the entire base was renamed Kindley Air Force Base (although some civilians still refer to it as Kindley Field). The USAF continued to operate the base, primarily as a refuelling station for trans-Atlantic flights by Military Air Transport Service (MATS) and Strategic Air Command
(SAC) aircraft.

Theater at Kindley AFB in early 1953
Boeing 377 Stratocruiser Cathay at Kindley AFB Bermuda in December 1953
Lockheed Constellation Columbine II during President Eisenhower's visit to Bermuda for the December 1953 Western Summit
Kindley AFB as U.S. Naval Air Station Bermuda, 1970

During the

P-3A Orion
reconnaissance flights by aeroplanes tracking Soviet shipping in the Atlantic. By the 1960s, with the increase in ranges of transport aircraft, Kindley Field's usefulness to the USAF had rapidly diminished.

At the same time, the U.S. Navy was still operating anti-submarine air patrols with

P-3 Orion aircraft. With the airfield having attained vastly greater importance to naval operations, it was permanently transferred to custody of the U.S. Navy in 1970, operating until 1995 as U.S. Naval Air Station Bermuda
.

During the latter stages of the

NAS Cecil Field
near Jacksonville, Florida, were also temporarily deployed to Bermuda in order to augment the forward deployed P-3C squadron.

The previous NAS Bermuda was renamed the NAS Annex and served primarily as a dock area for visiting U.S. naval vessels and as a support facility for the nearby Naval Facility (NAVFAC) Bermuda that supported the

Bermuda International Airport
.

Since 1962, several sounding rockets were launched from Kindley and the

National Aeronautics and Space Administration has operated a tracking and telemetry station on Cooper's Island
, at the eastern edge of the former Naval Air Station since the 1960s in support of crewed space flight operations.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 0-945274-44-0
    .
  2. ISBN 9781927750322
    .
  3. ISBN 9780969833246
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-921560-00-5
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-921560-11-1
    .
  6. ISBN 9780969651710
    .
  7. ^ Bermudians at NASA Tracking Station Cooper's Island, Bermuda: The History of Kindley Air Force Base

External links

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