Many of our higher dignitaries when visiting the island have pointed out that Bermuda today serves the purpose of a large fixed aircraft carrier strategically located in the Atlantic and can serve the United States and Great Britain very effectively in peacetime as well as periods of high tension. We are doing our part to be prepared.

¿ Captain M.V. Dawkins, USN, Commanding Officer, USNS Bermuda, United States Naval Station Bermuda, Silver Anniversary, 1966

Last Friday was the Fourth of July and our friends from the US Consulate at Bermuda had given the island a big party the previous Saturday to mark the occasion. On another Saturday, 67 years ago, the Americans had another ceremony on March 1, 1941, when they raised the "Stars and Stripes" on the grounds of the ancient and principal residence of Tucker's Island in Southampton Parish, to mark the establishment of a Naval Operating Base.

That would prove to be the first time that a foreign military base had been planted in a British dominion, underscoring the increasing dependence of England on the independent United States, its former colony in central North America.

On the occasion of the Silver Anniversary of the Commissioning of the Naval Operating Base on April 7, 1941, a booklet published in 1966, which concluded with a ringing statement of purpose and posterity: "As long as the free world needs a defense, the men of the US Navy here in Bermuda will provide a part of that defense and the US Naval Station will remain a lasting example of Anglo-American Unity."

The free world still needs military defence, but the Bermuda exemplar of the lasting Anglo-American unity evaporated in 1995, following the cessation of the Cold War with communist Russia. All that is left of US Government forces in the island is encapsulated in the US Consulate and that appears, in its new anti-terrorist architectural garb, to be defended by the men and women of the Bermuda Police Service.

The tributaries of American military money that fortified the local economy from 1941 were slowly replaced by great rivers of civilian cash from East Coast tourism from the mid-1950s. Both of those defensive streams have paled in comparison to the oceans of dollars that have crossed the Gulf Steam to underwrite the "international business" of Bermuda's financial institutions. The last yet find Bermuda "strategically located" and working "very effectively in peacetime" for their global, non-military, corporate interests ¿ at the moment anyway.

The Naval Operating Base, or "NOB" to many Bermudians, is a mere shadow of its former self, that is where shadows can form unhindered by the Mexican pepper jungle that has consumed much of the Station on a peninsular and part of mainland Southampton Parish. Now consideration is being given to repositioning NOB as a new cog in the tourism engine by the creation of a hotel and modern amenities attending thereto.

At the flag-raising at the Tucker House on Tucker's Island on March 1, 1941, buglers of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps and 23 US Marines, who were the first Americans to be stationed here, accompanied the Governor, Sir Denis Bernard. When Captain Jules James, USN, commissioned NOB on April 7, no British or local officials bothered to come as he hoisted his pennant over the "former residence of Mrs. Wooly-Hart" (sic, Marguerite Woolley-Hart).

In response to a reporter's question about how long he would be there, James replied: "The lease is for 99 years, isn't it?", which equates to the year 2040. As it proved, the American bases were abandoned after only 54 years in 1995.

The Naval Operating Base served naval ships and flying boats, whereas Fort Bell and Kindley Field at the eastern end were for the army and land-based planes. The "Fort Bell-NOB Highway", which was Middle Road after resurfacing by American Seabees of Construction Battalion Maintenance Unity 540, connected Kindley Field and the Naval Operating Base and ushered in the widespread use of motorised vehicles.

The flying boats at NOB were originally PBYs, but these were replaced by the PBM, designed by the extraordinary engineer Glenn L. Martin, of what eventually became Lockheed Martin. Some of these boats were equipped with JATO, for "jet-assisted take off". Used primarily for anti-submarine warfare, the flying boats were a familiar sight in the Great Sound in the childhood of many Bermudians yet living.

Two squadrons, VP-49 and VP-45, with their Mariners, were the mainstay of the Bermuda flying boat fleet into the early 1960s, when their functions were taken over by the land-based P-3 Orions at Kindley Field, still in use round the clock when the American bases closed in 1995.

Throughout the history of the American stations at Bermuda, anti-submarine warfare was the staple work, as Russian submarines and threats replaced German U-boats of the 1939-45 conflict. In addition to surveillance by the flying boats and land planes, secret work on sonar and other subjects was carried out at Tudor Hill at NOB, at the SOFAR station at Kindley Field, and at "Argus Island", an oil rig-like tower erected on one of the undersea banks to the southwest of Bermuda in 1960 and toppled in 1976.

In the repositioning of Bermuda for the demands of World War Two, a great deal of environmental and cultural property was destroyed or altered beyond recognition, although it is said in the case of NOB that President Roosevelt asked that Bermudian architecture be preserved. This may explain the survival of the Tucker House on Tucker's Island where the US flag was first raised in March 1941.

The front yard of the building, however, was raised some six feet to provide part of the main roadway at NOB and thus the welcoming arms stairs were removed and the house was entered at its original ground level, the door now six feet below the roadbed. Comparing old and modern views, it seems that the 1941 lanterns to either side of the original upper door have gone walkabout in the last decade or so.

It is to be hoped, in the repositioning of NOB as a tourism station, that that old house and other historical features of the Base can be preserved and given new uses and the respect that all our architectural heritage richly deserves.

l The author thanks Dr. Clarence Maxwell and Bruce Barth, author and historian of the Martin seaplanes, for their assistance.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. This article represents his opinions and not necessarily those of persons associated with the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.