President Roosevelt accepted the agreement on the evening of August 30, 1940.  On September 2, 1940, as the battle for Britain intensified, Foreign Secretary Cordell Hull inasuated his agreement to hand over warships to the Royal Navy. On September 3, 1940, Admiral Harold Stark certified that the destroyers were not essential to the security of the United States. In exchange, the United States obtained land in various British possessions for the construction of naval or air bases with leases without rent of 99 years: commonly referred to as the «120-ton type» (also known as the «flush bridge» or «Four Pipers» after their four funnels), the destroyers became the British Town class and were named after common cities in the United States and the United Kingdom.  Roosevelt used an executive agreement that did not require congressional approval, but it was violently attacked by anti-war political elements. The agreement violated neutrality laws.  The Destroyers for Bases Agreement was an agreement concluded on 2 September 1940 between the United States and the United Kingdom, under which 50 destroyers of the Caldwell, Wickes and Clemson classes of the US Navy were handed over by the United States Navy to British property in exchange for land rights. The agreement also granted the United States rights to air and naval bases: the agreement was much more important for the beginning of the Anglo-American partnership during the war. Mr Churchill told Parliament that «these two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, must be somewhat confused in some of their affairs, in the mutual and general interest.»  The agreement on bases in Bermuda provided that the United States would build at its own expense an airfield capable of liquidating large ground aircraft that would be operated jointly by the US Army Air Force and the Royal Air Force. The airfield was called Kindley Field (for Field Kindley, an American aircraft that fought for Britain during World War I). RAF Transport Command transferred its operations to the airfield when it was completed in 1943, although RAF Ferry Command remained at Darrell`s Island. Previously, the U.S.
Navy had built the naval operating base in Bermuda`s West End. It was a boarding station from which maritime patrols were operated for the rest of the war (the US Navy had effectively begun operating seaplanes from Darrell Island while waiting for its own base to be commissioned). Raf and FAA facilities were closed after the war, leaving only US air bases in Bermuda. The Naval Operating Base ceased to be an air station in 1965, when its ships were replaced by Lockheed P-2 Neptunes operating from Kindley Air Force Base (as the former U.S. Army airfield had become). These U.S. air bases were just two of the many U.S. military installations operating in Bermuda in the twentieth century. The United States abandoned many of these bases in 1949 and the other few were closed in 1995. The agreement had been negotiated in correspondence between U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the British Ambassador to America.
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