In the early 1950s, SAC was the major tenant on military airfields in
Morocco: Ben Guerir and Sidi Slimane Air Bases in central Morocco,
and Nouasseur Air Base in the desert about 25 kilometers south of the
Morocco's dominant port Casablanca. Morocco had been a French
protectorate since 1912, and thousands of French citizens and other
Europeans had migrated to French and Spanish Morocco over the years
and taken up residency. Large numbers of Moroccan, French and other
European nationals were employed by the USAF at its bases and the US
Navy's tenancy in Port Lyauty, and at other military installations where
the U S and/or NATO had been granted French/Moroccan permission to
do so.
Throughout the French occupation of Morocco a number of Moroccan
nationalist groups formed in opposition to French domination, and
engaged increasingly in nationalist political and armed resistance,
including occasional bombings and other acts of violence. Sultan
Mohammed V sided with the nationalists and was deposed in 1953.
This further angered the Moroccan populace. In-country violence
increased.
The Sultan returned from exile in 1955 and Morocco gained its
independence some years later. Many French and Spanish citizens
returned to their countries of origin. French military forces, business
enterprises, and employment for the indigenous population in Morocco
became uncertain, and so did American military presence on Moroccan
territory.
In the years that followed, the Libyan government also changed rulers,
with the results that American use of Wheelus Field, for any purpose,
was revoked. Nevertheless, context and circumstances in North Africa
aside, USAF planning for support to SAC operations under general war
conditions, and for a variety of military contingencies, continued; in its
way, North Africa all along the Med, would likely experience a deja vu of
its WW2 occupations and their consequences. Caught up in a nuclear
exchange, probably worse.
In WW2, oil refineries, and storage and transport nets, such as those in
the Romanian Ploesti complex, were important but extremely costly
targets. For instance, in one WW2 mission, of 178 B-24s dispatched to
bomb Ploesti, 52 were lost, and all but 35 aircraft suffered damage, one
limping home after 14 hours and holed in 365 places. Most of these
Allied bombing missions originated in and returned to airfields in North
Africa; many of the old landing strips, fuel storage, and maintenance
shops previously used by German and Italian military occupiers and
then by the Allies, were in poor condition, but they were there.