Nouasseur Air Base near

Casablanca Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to A ...

, was a

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...

base from 1951 to 1963. It was designed for

B-36 The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" is a strategic bomber that was built by Convair and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 is the largest mass-produced Reciprocating engine, piston-engined aircraft ever built. It ...

and

B-47 The Boeing B-47 Stratojet (Boeing company designation Model 450) is a retired American long-range, six-engined, turbojet-powered strategic bomber designed to fly at high subsonic speed and at high altitude to avoid enemy interceptor aircraft. ...

bombers but never came into use, and also housed repair units for a period. Today, Nouasseur AB is known as

Mohammed V International Airport Mohammed V International Airport, ; ber, ⴰⵣⴰⴳⵯⵣ ⴰⴳⵔⵖⵍⴰⵏ ⵎⵓⵃⵎⵎⴷ ⵡⵙ5; french: Aéroport International de Mohammed V is an international airport serving Casablanca, Morocco. Located in Nouaceur Province ...

. It hosts helicopters of the

Royal Moroccan Navy ber, ⴰⴷⵡⴰⵙ ⴰⴳⴻⵍⴷⴰⵏ ⵏ ⵢⵉⵍⴻⵍ , image = , caption = Royal Moroccan Navy Seal , start_date = active since: 11th century current form: 30 Apr ...

Origins

USAF air base siting in the former

French protectorate in Morocco The French protectorate in Morocco (french: Protectorat français au Maroc; ar, الحماية الفرنسية في المغرب), also known as French Morocco, was the period of French colonial rule in Morocco between 1912 to 1956. The prote ...

developed out of the Allied presence there at the close of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. In the early 1950s, SAC developed an " Operation Reflex" strategy between its southern bases and Morocco, with

and

wings rotating to

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

for extended temporary duty as a staging area for

bombers A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped from an aircra ...

pointed at the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. Initially dispatched was a repair unit, the 80th Air Depot Wing (80 ADW). Brigadier General Wilfred H. Hardy led the wing's transfer from

Kelly Air Force Base Kelly Field (formerly Kelly Air Force Base) is a Joint-Use facility located in San Antonio, Texas. It was originally named after George E. M. Kelly, the first member of the U.S. military killed in the crash of an airplane he was piloting. In ...

in March 1951.

Biography of Brig. Gen. Wilfred H. Hardy
/ref> Replacing the 80th ADW was a MAJCON temporary unit, the 7280th Air Depot Wing. It was activated on 8 June 1953, and served until 1 March 1954. In turn it was replaced by the 3153rd Air Base Wing when the base was transferred to

Air Materiel Command Air Materiel Command (AMC) was a United States Army Air Forces and United States Air Force command. Its headquarters was located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. In 1961, the command was redesignated the Air Force Logistics Command ...

. In its turn, the 3153rd ABW was replaced about 1 July 1958 by the 3922d Air Base Group, when the base transferred to SAC.

SAC use

In December 1951, the 118th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron was transferred to Nouasseur. The majority of the squadron's personnel were located at Nouasseur Air Base, but they also had detachments in the field in the

Atlas Mountains The Atlas Mountains are a mountain range in the Maghreb in North Africa. It separates the Sahara Desert from the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean; the name "Atlantic" is derived from the mountain range. It stretches around through ...

and the

Sahara Desert , photo = Sahara real color.jpg , photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972 , map = , map_image = , location = , country = , country1 = , ...

. Their mission was to calibrate, set up, and maintain early warning and tactical control

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, Marine radar, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor v ...

and radio sites in support of the

Strategic Air Command Strategic Air Command (SAC) was both a United States Department of Defense Specified Command and a United States Air Force (USAF) Major Command responsible for command and control of the strategic bomber and intercontinental ballistic missile ...

. Nouasseur Air Base was critically important for SAC during its forward deployment exercises. Nouasseur was quite capable of hosting any of SAC's aircraft, with an asphalt-concrete

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt, concrete ...

of . The airfield became operational in July 1951. The aircraft flown by SAC to Morocco from the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

remained on alert status for a specified number of days, then returned to their

CONUS ''Conus'' is a genus of predatory sea snails, or cone snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Conidae.Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S. (2015). Conus Linnaeus, 1758. In: MolluscaBase (2015). Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species a ...

bases. The

5th Air Division The 5th Air Division (5th AD) is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with Strategic Air Command, based at Sidi Slimane Air Base, Morocco. It was inactivated on 15 July 1958. The unit's origins begin with its predec ...

never had any assigned combat units, such as wings, only individual aircraft that were assigned to units back in the United States. The 5th Air Division did oversee the 3922d Air Base Group (which later became the 3922 Combat Support Group) as the base operating unit. The division commander also acted as a representative to the Moroccan Liaison Office for the Commander,

16th Air Force The Sixteenth Air Force (Air Forces Cyber) (16 AF) is a United States Air Force (USAF) organization responsible for information warfare, which encompasses intelligence gathering and analysis, surveillance, reconnaissance, cyber warfare and elec ...

. During the middle and late-1950s, SAC adopted a dispersal program—spreading out its potential as a Soviet target by placing its aircraft, weapons, and personnel on many more bases, with each bombardment wing having two additional installations to which it could disperse. Nouasseur was one of a ring of overseas SAC air bases located from Greenland to North Africa. In addition, SAC devised a deployment program to use its shorter-range

s, which Nouasseur hosted, rotating squadrons on a 90-day basis and kept the aircraft on 15-minute alert for that time period. The overseas bases moved the B-47s into effective range of their targets without

aerial refueling Aerial refueling, also referred to as air refueling, in-flight refueling (IFR), air-to-air refueling (AAR), and tanking, is the process of transferring aviation fuel from one aircraft (the tanker) to another (the receiver) while both aircraft a ...

. USAFE F-86 Sabres began flying gunnery training missions during the spring of 1954 from Nouasseur. The

was inactivated on 15 January 1958. It was replaced by the

4310th Air Division The 4310th Air Division is a discontinued United States Air Force organization. It was last assigned to the Sixteenth Air Force at Nouasseur Air Base, Morocco. It was discontinued on 15 August 1963. History The 4310th Air Division was organize ...

, which remained the host unit until the base closed in 1963. With the destabilization of the French government in Morocco, and Moroccan independence in 1956, the government of Mohammed V wanted the US Air Force to pull out of the SAC bases in Morocco, insisting on such action after American intervention in

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus lie ...

in 1958. The

agreed to leave as of December 1959, and was fully out of Nouasseur Air Base, closing the facility in December 1963.

References

External links

Nouasseur-Nelson C. Brown Elementary & High School Alumni Association

* 3973d Combat Defense Squadron's Webpage for the SAC's 16th Air Force Units and Bases,
Nouasseur AB, Morocco
{{Casablanca Royal Moroccan Navy Buildings and structures in Casablanca-Settat Installations of the United States Air Force in Morocco Installations of Strategic Air Command