Destroyers-for-bases deal

• 1. Fifty Old Ships

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  The destroyers-for-bases deal of 1940 sent fifty American warships to the Royal Navy, and Admiral Bertram Ramsay did not think much of them. He called them the "worst destroyers I had ever seen." Britain took them anyway. The United States was officially neutral in World War II at the time, and its law forbade selling arms to any nation at war. So how did a neutral country end up handing over a fleet of warships? What did it receive in return, and why did Britain have no real choice but to agree? Who in America was furious about it? And what became of the ships once they crossed the Atlantic?

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• 2. Britain Stands Alone

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  By late June 1940, France had surrendered to Germany and Italy, and the British Empire and Commonwealth faced Hitler and Mussolini on their own. A month earlier, the British Chiefs of Staff Committee had written a stark warning. If France fell, they said, "we do not think we could continue the war with any chance of success." The condition they attached was "full economic and financial support" from the United States.

  The American government sympathised, but the American public did not want to fight. Opinion overwhelmingly favoured isolationism and a refusal to join "another European war." Three years earlier, Congress had passed the Neutrality Acts, which banned shipping or selling arms from the United States to any nation at war.

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced a further problem in 1940, which was an election year. His critics were eager to paint him as a man who wanted war. Legal advice from the Justice Department did say the transaction was lawful, but the politics remained dangerous.

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• 3. Churchill's Plea

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  In late May 1940, the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo left the Royal Navy short of ships. The need was urgent. The Battle of the Atlantic was under way, and German U-boats threatened the food and other resources that Britain required to keep fighting.

  German troops were advancing rapidly into France, and many in Washington believed that the defeat of France and Britain was close. The Americans sent a proposal to London through the British ambassador, the Marquess of Lothian. They wanted to lease airfields on Trinidad, Bermuda and Newfoundland.

  Prime Minister Winston Churchill rejected the offer on the 27th of May unless Britain received something immediate in return. On the 1st of June, Roosevelt found a way around the Neutrality Act. He declared millions of rounds of ammunition and obsolescent small arms to be "surplus" and authorised their shipment to Britain. Churchill's pleas for destroyers, however, were turned down.

  By August, Britain was at a low point. The American ambassador in London, Joseph P. Kennedy, reported that a British surrender was "inevitable." Churchill answered with an argument aimed at American self-interest. If Britain were defeated, he warned Roosevelt, its colonial islands near American shores could become a direct threat if Germany seized them.

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• 4. The Terms

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  Roosevelt approved the deal on the evening of the 30th of August 1940. On the 2nd of September, with the Battle of Britain intensifying, Secretary of State Cordell Hull signalled agreement to the transfer of the warships. The next day, Admiral Harold Stark certified that the destroyers were not vital to American security.

  In return, the United States received rent-free, 99-year leases for naval or air bases. The sites were on Newfoundland, the eastern side of the Bahamas, the southern coast of Jamaica, and the western coast of Saint Lucia. They also included the west coast of Trinidad on the Gulf of Paria, Antigua, and a stretch of British Guiana, now Guyana, within fifty miles of Georgetown.

  Roosevelt used an executive agreement, a form of deal that does not need approval from Congress. Antiwar Americans attacked him sharply. They argued that the arrangement broke the Neutrality Acts.

  The bargain tilted heavily toward Washington. Churchill's aide John Colville compared it to the relationship between the USSR and Finland, though Britain had no choice but to accept it.

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• 5. Bermuda for Free

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  Two of the base sites, in Bermuda and Newfoundland, came without any destroyers attached. The United States got base rights there for nothing, on top of the sites it had paid for with ships. Both territories mattered greatly to trans-Atlantic shipping, aviation and the Battle of the Atlantic.

  An attack on either place was unlikely, but it could not be ruled out. Britain had therefore been forced to keep defensive forces on the spot, including the Bermuda Garrison. Handing much of Bermuda's defence to the neutral Americans freed British troops for more active theatres. It also meant that strategic facilities would be built at American expense, and British forces would use them too.

  In Bermuda, the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm operated stations that handled only flying boats. The RAF station on Darrell's Island served as a staging point for trans-Atlantic flights and hosted the Bermuda Flying School, but it ran no maritime patrols. The Fleet Air Arm station on Boaz Island tried to patrol by borrowing pilots from ships, Darrell's Island and the flying school.

  The Bermuda agreement required the Americans to build, at their own cost, an airfield able to take large landplanes. The US Army Air Force and the RAF would run it jointly. It was named Kindley Field after Field Kindley, an American aviator who fought for Britain in World War I. RAF Transport Command moved there when it opened in 1943.

  The US Navy built a Naval Operating Base at Bermuda's West End, a flying boat station that flew patrols for the rest of the war. Until it was ready, the Navy flew floatplanes from Darrell's Island. In 1965, the base's flying boats gave way to Lockheed P-2 Neptunes flying from Kindley Air Force Base, as the field had become. The Naval Annex stayed in use until 1995.

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• 6. Bases Around the Atlantic

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  On Newfoundland, the Americans built a string of Army Air Force airfields, including Pepperrell, Goose Bay, Stephenville and McAndrew. Pepperrell closed in August 1961 and passed to the Canadian Forces. Goose Bay followed in July 1976. Stephenville closed in December 1966 and is now Stephenville International Airport.

  Naval Station Argentia, also on Newfoundland, closed in 1994. In August 1941 it hosted the Atlantic Conference, which produced the Atlantic Charter. The US Army also ran coastal defence batteries at Argentia and St. John's, and radar stations at places such as Cape Spear and Fogo Island. All of these closed in 1945.

  In the Caribbean, Antigua gained Naval Air Station Crabbs and Coolidge Army Airfield. Jamaica received Vernam Army Airfield, a naval air station on Little Goat Island and a naval facility at Port Royal. Saint Lucia had Beane Army Airfield and a naval air station at Gros Islet Bay. British Guiana had Atkinson Aerodrome and a seaplane base near Suddie. In the Bahamas, a seaplane base stood on Exuma Island at George Town.

  Trinidad became the largest Caribbean installation. Naval Base Trinidad served as a major base from 1941 to 1977. It sat beside two Army Air Force airfields, Waller and Carlsen, an emergency airstrip at Camden, and a blimp base. Most Army airfields in the region closed in 1949. Despite the 99-year leases, the Americans had abandoned many Bermuda sites that same year, and the last were closed by 1995.

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• 7. Old Ships, New Names

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  The ships were known as the twelve hundred-ton type, or flush-deckers, or four-pipers because of their four funnels. They had been built in the massive American shipbuilding programme of World War I. Many had been laid up in reserve and were not preserved properly, so they needed extensive overhaul before they could sail into battle.

  Of the 50 ships, 3 were Caldwell-class, 27 were Wickes-class and 20 were Clemson-class. Forty-three initially went to the Royal Navy and seven to the Royal Canadian Navy. Another nine served with the Canadians before the war ended. Britain and Canada renamed them after towns that the two countries shared, so they became the Town class. The USS Buchanan, for example, became HMS Campbeltown, and the USS Herndon became HMS Churchill.

  The Americans described the transfer as a "generous action... to enhance the national security of the United States." The practical results were slower. Only 30 of the ships were in service by May 1941.

  Churchill disliked the deal too, but his advisers persuaded him to be restrained. He told Roosevelt, "We have so far only been able to bring a few of your fifty destroyers into action." The cause, he explained, was the many defects the ships developed in Atlantic weather after sitting idle for so long.

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• 8. Fates of the Fifty

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  Six of the 50 destroyers were sunk by U-boats. The USS Hopewell, renamed HMS Bath, was transferred to the Norwegian navy in April 1941 and sunk by U-204 on the 19th of August that year. HMS Broadwater went down to U-101 on the 18th of October 1941, and HMS Belmont to U-82 on the 31st of January 1942. HMCS St. Croix was sunk by U-952 on the 20th of September 1943.

  Three more were lost in other ways. HMS Cameron, formerly the USS Welles, was damaged beyond repair in an air raid at Portsmouth on the 5th of December 1940. HMS Campbeltown was intentionally destroyed in the St. Nazaire Raid on the 28th of March 1942.

  Other navies handled the ships as well. Five were crewed by the Royal Norwegian Navy, and one was manned by Royal Netherlands Navy sailors before the St. Nazaire Raid. Nine were eventually transferred to the Soviet Navy, mostly in 1944. One of those, HMS Leamington, later recreated the St. Nazaire raid in the Trevor Howard film Gift Horse. The last of the fleet to be broken up was Druzhny, formerly the USS Yarnall, in 1952.

  In 1941, Roosevelt answered Churchill's complaint by sending ten Lake-class Coast Guard cutters. They were ten years younger than the destroyers and had greater range, which made them better anti-submarine convoy escorts.

  Churchill saw the larger meaning. He told the British Parliament that "the British Empire and the United States" would "have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage."

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