Francis E. Warren Air Force Base
Warren AFB is the oldest continuously active military installation within the Air Force, established in 1867 by the United States Army as Fort David Allen Russell. The facility came under United States Army Air Forces control on 1 June 1947, and United States Air Force (USAF) respectively on 18 September 1947 until now.
Destroyers for Bases Agreement
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 Lockheed P-2 Neptunes, operating from the Kindley Air Force Base (as the former US Army airfield had become). These U.S. 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.