United Kingdom, U.S. Military Involvement in the

United Kingdom, U.S. Military Involvement in the. Following the U.S. entry into World War II, the United Kingdom became a springboard for Allied bombing offensives against the Axis countries as well as the assembly point for Allied invasion forces prior to the D‐Day landing (1944). A series of Anglo‐American military operations, such as the North Africa Campaign, paved the way for D‐Day and the final assault on Germany in June 1944. The joint U.S.British invasion of Normandy (Operation Overlord) marked the largest combined operation in the history of warfare. By 11 days after D‐Day, 641,170 British, Canadians, and Americans had crossed the English Channel and landed in northwest France. The United Kingdom's role as a deployment base for operations on the Continent was to continue after the war when, in Churchill's words, the United Kingdom became an unsinkable aircraft carrier for U.S. forces.

During the Cold War, before development of the B‐52 intercontinental bomber in the early 1950s, the United Kingdom was of crucial strategic importance for USAF bombers defending Western Europe. The first B‐29s capable of carrying atomic munitions arrived in the summer of 1949 in East Anglia. This and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 led to British demands for more formal understandings about U.S. basing. Meetings between Prime Ministers Clement Attlee and Winston S. Churchill with President Harry S. Truman in 1950 and 1952, respectively, resulted in the controversial understanding that the use of the bases would be a “matter for joint decision” by the two governments “in the light of the circumstances prevailing at the time.” American concerns centered on whether this implied a British veto; British concerns centered on the possible use of U.S. nuclear weapons without consultation.

Throughout the 1950s, the number of air bases grew. Strategic Air Command (SAC) operations in Britain were overseen by the Seventh Air Division (headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska), while the Third Air Force (headquarters at RAF Mildenhall) assumed responsibility for all tactical and logistical activities. The number of U.S. military personnel grew to around 30,000 deployed on 9 major bases and 30 smaller locations.

The growing importance of missiles was stressed in 1957, when intermediate‐range ballistic missiles were introduced into Britain, as well as into Italy and Turkey, to balance a perceived Soviet advantage in the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Special emphasis was placed on low‐level penetration of Warsaw Pact nations' air defenses, a role assumed by the Third Air Force and the F‐111 aircraft based in Oxfordshire and East Anglia. The advent of longer‐range missiles also raised concerns about the vulnerability of air bases and heavy bomber aircraft, which led to the deactivation of the Seventh Air Division in 1965.

The U.S. Navy assumed a significant role in 1960 in an agreement between President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to use Holy Loch in Scotland for deployment of nuclear‐armed Polaris (later Trident) submarines. In spite of the cutback in SAC operations, the number of U.S. military personnel remained constant, due to the naval presence and the influx of U.S. military personnel from France in 1967 following withdrawal of French forces from NATO.

Public opposition to the U.S. military presence in the United Kingdom was primarily antinuclear (with the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament taking a leading role), notably against the Thor missiles, Polaris and Trident submarines, and the deployment of ground‐launched Pershing cruise missiles following the 1979 North Atlantic Council decision. The use of U.S. bases in East Anglia for the 1986 air strike against Libya also prompted public opposition, although the raid had the full support of Margaret Thatcher's government.

The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact saw a reduction in the number of American service personnel in the United Kingdom. By mid‐1995, there were 18 U.S. bases or facilities in the United Kingdom and nearly 14,000 active duty personnel, 2,384 civilian personnel, and 10,281 dependents.
[See also France, Liberation of; Germany, Battle for; Middle East, U.S. Military Involvement in the; World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

Duncan Campbell , The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier, 1984.
Robert Jackson , Strike Force: The USAF in Britain Since 1948, 1986.
Simon Duke , U.S. Defence Bases in the United Kingdom, 1987.
Simon Duke and Wolfgang Krieger, eds., U.S. Military Forces in Europe: The Early Years, 1945–60, 1993.
David Reynolds , Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942–5, 1995.

Simon Duke