Naples Municipal Airport
The facility was established in 1942 as Naples Army Airfield by the United States Army Air Forces. It was initially assigned to the Southeast Training Center (later Eastern Flying Training Command). Provided basic (level 1) flight training to flight cadets by Embry-Riddle Co; Fairchild PT-19s were the primary trainer used. Along with the flight training, was a sub-base to Buckingham Army Airfield for flexible gunnery training, which the 75th Flying Training Wing supervised. Inactivated on November 1, 1945, being turned over to the War Assets Administration for conveyance to civil control as a public airport.
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.