Bermuda Flying School

The Bermuda Flying School operated on Darrell's Island from 1940 to 1942. It trained Bermudian volunteers as pilots for the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm.

During the First World War, roughly twenty Bermudians had entered the Royal Flying Corps and its successor, the Royal Air Force (RAF), as aviators and many others as groundcrew. Other than aircraft on visiting ships, there were no aircraft based in Bermuda 'til after the war, when returning military aviators, Majors Hal Kitchener (son of the late governor, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Walter Kitchener, and nephew of Field Marshal Earl Kitchener) and Hemming, created a small company offering local flights in sea planes operating from Hinson's Island. In 1936, Imperial Airways built an air station on Darrell's Island. This operated as a staging point on scheduled trans-Atlantic flights by flying boats of Imperial Airways and Pan American. At the time, no land planes could operate from Bermuda, there being no airfields.

With the start of the Second World War, the RAF in Bermuda took over Darrell's Island for use by RAF Transport Command and RAF Ferry Command. Although the Royal Navy had a dockyard in Bermuda (which included an air station, RNAS Boaz Island (HMS Malabar) for flying boats), and Canadian and American naval and airbases would be established during the war, the only local units were the part-time army units, the Bermuda Militia Artillery (BMA), Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC), Bermuda Volunteer Engineers (BVE), the Bermuda Militia Infantry (BMI), and Home Guard. These, along with a regular army detachment of infantry at Prospect Camp, formed the Bermuda Garrison, tasked with defending the various facilities of importance to the war effort. Although a contingent from the BVRC, with attachments from the other units, was sent to join the Lincolnshire Regiment in England in 1940, no further drafts were allowed to be sent for fear of weakening the defences. By 1943, this was no longer a concern and the moratorium was lifted.

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