ABSTRACT
Before 1940, the U.S. basing structure had been restricted to a small number of colonial possessions and satraps, in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Wake Island and the Panama Canal Zone. The Lend-Lease Act added a string of bases in British and Canadian territories along the U.S. Atlantic littoral, in Labrador, Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Antigua, Trinidad and British Guyana. Then at the start of World War II, the U.S. established forward access in Greenland, Iceland, the Azores, Mexico (Acapulco) and Ecuador (the Galapagos Islands). By the end of the conflict the U.S. had access to a near-global network of facilities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
