Editing History of Bermuda (section)

===World Wars===
[[File:BVRC-Great-War-Contingent_1914.jpg|thumb|The [[Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps]]' First Contingent, raised in 1914 to serve in Belgium and France. By the war's end, the First and Second BVRC contingents together had lost over 75% of their combined strength.]]
Bermuda sent volunteer troops to fight in Europe with the British Army. They suffered severe losses. During the First World War, a number of [[Bermudians in the Canadian Expeditionary Force|Bermudians served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force]].

During World War II, Bermuda's importance as a military base increased because of its location on the major trans-Atlantic shipping route. [[Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda|The Royal Naval dockyard]] on Ireland Island played a role similar to that it had during [[World War I]], overseeing the formation of trans-Atlantic convoys composed of hundreds of ships. The military garrison, which included four local territorial units, maintained a guard against potential enemy attacks on the Island.

From 1939, the [[Royal Canadian Navy]] (RCN) worked with the RN to establish an anti-submarine training program at Casemates Barracks. In May 1940, Canada was asked to provide garrison support, with one company of [[The Winnipeg Grenadiers]] sailing from Halifax to relieve a company of the [[King's Shropshire Light Infantry]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/his/docs/Sixyrs_e.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/his/docs/Sixyrs_e.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|title=Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War- Volume I -Six Years of War|last=STACEY|first=C. P.|date=1955|website=National Defence and the Canadian Forces|publisher=Government of Canada|access-date=31 July 2016}} p. 181</ref> The [[The Pictou Highlanders|Special Infantry Company of the Pictou Highlanders]] was mobilized on 10 September 1942 for service in Bermuda from 12 November 1942. In 1944, the RCN established a training base at the former [[Royal Navy]] base at [[Convict's Bay, Bermuda|Convict's Bay]], [[St. George's, Bermuda|St. George's]], using a shore facility named {{HMCS|Somers Isles}}. HMCS ''Somers Isles'' closed in 1945 and Canadian forces left Bermuda (temporarily) in 1946.

Bermuda became important for [[British Security Co-ordination]] operations with the ability to vet radio communication and search passengers and mail using flying boats to transit the Atlantic, with over 1,200 people working on opening packages secretly, finding coded messages, secret writing, micro dots and identifying spies working for [[Nazi Germany]], [[Fascist Italy (1922–1943)|Fascist Italy]] and [[Vichy France]] in the Americas, much of the information found being passed to the [[FBI]]. The Island was a base for direction finding equipment to help identify locations of German submarines and took down [[Enigma machine|Enigma]] encoded messages, which were sent for [[Cryptanalysis of the Enigma]] to [[Bletchley Park]].<ref>{{cite book |title=A man called Intrepid |last=Stevenson |first=William |publisher=Macmillan London Limited |date=1976 |sbn=333 19377 6}}</ref>

In 1941, the United States signed the [[destroyers-for-bases deal]] with the United Kingdom, giving the British surplus U.S. Navy [[destroyer]]s in exchange for 99-year lease rights to establish naval and air bases in certain British territories. Although not included in this trade, [[Winston Churchill]] granted the US similar 99-year leases "freely and without consideration" in both Bermuda and Newfoundland. (The commonly held belief that the [[Military of Bermuda|Bermudian bases]] were part of the trade is not correct.) The advantage for Britain of granting these base rights was that the neutral US effectively took responsibility for the security of these territories, freeing British forces to be deployed to the sharper ends of the War. The terms of the base rights granted for Bermuda provided that the airfield constructed by the US would be used jointly with the [[Royal Air Force]] (RAF).
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The Bermuda bases consisted of {{convert|5.8|km2|1|abbr=on}} of land, largely reclaimed from the sea. The [[United States Army Air Forces|USAAF]] airfield, [[USAAF, Fort Bell 1941-1948|Fort Bell]] (later, [[Kindley Air Force Base|US Air Force Base Kindley Field]], and, later still, [[USN NAS Bermuda, Kindley Field, 1970-1995|US Naval Air Station Bermuda]]) was on St. David's Island, while the [[USN NAS Bermuda/NAS Annex, Morgans Point, 1941-1995|Naval Operations Base]], a Naval Air Station for maritime patrol flying boats, (which became the Naval Air Station Annex after US Naval air operations relocated to ) was at the western end of the island in the Great Sound. These joined two other air stations already operating on Bermuda, the pre-war civil airport on [[Royal Air Force, Bermuda, 1939-1945|Darrell's Island]], which had been taken over by the RAF, and the [[Fleet Air Arm]]'s [[List of air stations of the Royal Navy|Royal Naval Air Station]], [[Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm. RNAS, Boaz Island|HMS Malabar]], on [[Boaz Island, Bermuda|Boaz Island]].