Portuguese Lend Lease - or the Allies have an Airstrip in the Azores earlier in WW2

In ww2 the Portuguese leader Salazar managed to steer his Nation between the various camps, keeping his country out of the war and as well as managing to keep to the letter and Spirit of the various treaties to which Portugal was a party.

What if Britain and or the US had managed to secure basing rights on one or more of the Islands in the Azores?

Realistically how and could this be done?

What impact would this have had on the Battle of the Atlantic?

Conversely how might this have impacted the balance of power between Salazar and Franco (if anything?)
 

Don Quijote

Banned
RAF and USAAF Liberators and other ASW aircraft were based in the Azores from 1943 onwards, as the British invoked the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance (which dates back to 1386!). This allowed much greater coverage of the central North Atlantic. Portuguese aircraft had already been quietly carrying out reconnaissance sorties on behalf of the Allies from the airfield at Lajes, which was expanded throughout the war.

The British had supplied Portugal with cheap/free used Hurricanes and later Spitfires during the war, and after the war it received around $50 million in Marshal Aid, but as a neutral it never directly benefited from Lend-Lease.
 
If the US Navy PBY and PBM float planes and RAF Sunderland flying boats had been able to operate out of the Azores by the fall of 1942, German U-boats would have been a lot less effective since the Allies would have routed shipping convoys so they could be within operational range of these planes operating out of the Azores until escort carriers became widely available by 1943.
 
the British invoked the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance (which dates back to 1386!).
Heck, they have worked together since the English and Northern European Crusaders assisted the Portuguese in capturing Lisbon in 1147 while on their way to the Second Crusade.
 

Don Quijote

Banned
Heck, they have worked together since the English and Northern European Crusaders assisted the Portuguese in capturing Lisbon in 1147 while on their way to the Second Crusade.

The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty was signed in 1373, and was I think the first formal alliance between the two. The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance of 1386 is the one still in force today.

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Long live Anglo-Portuguese co-operation:D

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