About a year or so after my transfer from Supply the individual who took my job in the Supply Directorate told me, in the presence of my former unit's employees, that my decision had been 'right.' I didn't ask for details.

Memoir: Logistics Planning, The Cold War, Nouasseur Air Base,
Morocco 1953-1956

Preface: The 'Cold War' between the U S and the former USSR began in the mid-1940s and extended over the following half-century until the Soviet Union dissolved in the early 1990s. The Cold War's cost to the United States exceeded $8 trillion. More than 110,000 American military lives were lost on foreign soil in the major military conflicts of that era: Korea in the early 1950s and Viet Nam from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Military personnel and civilians of all nations involved that were killed or wounded on both sides in those two wars and in other clashes between the US/NATO countries and the USSR have been estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.

Introduction: >From 1953 to 1956 I was a U S Air Force civilian employee at Nouasseur Air Base, about 20 miles southwest of Casablanca in what was then French Morocco. My job was in the Logistics Plans Office of the Nouasseur Air Depot.

The Nouasseur Air Depot was being constructed and staffed to support one of three major USAF/NATO logistics centers (Air Materiel Forces European Areas North, Central, and South) in the European-Med-North African-Middle Eastern Theater in the event of a war with the USSR. Each AMF and its 'depot' would serve a primary geographic area. Generally, when AMFEA was fully implemented its mission would range from acquisition to distribution of materiel and supplies, repair and maintenance of aircraft and equipment, and support to its constituents by way of U S Military Assistance Programs and other arrangements.

In addition to the Nouasseur Air Depot (AMFEA South), the Burtonwood Air Depot (AMFEA North), near Manchester UK, would support air forces in the UK and European Northern Tier countries. The Chatereaux Air Depot (AMFEA Central) in Chatereaux, France, about half way between Paris and Marseilles, would support the Central Tier, which extended beyond the Northern Tier to the Mediterranean coast (overlapping somewhat with those of the Nouasseur Air Depot in Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Turkey). Nouasseur (Casablanca) had the Southern Tier, which included North Africa on into the Middle East, countries along and in the Med and areas that were not within the Northern and Central Tiers.

As a Logistics Planner at Nouasseur, one of my projects was to prepare an element of U S Air Force Europe (USAFE) logistics plans to support the U S Strategic Air Command (SAC). The plan would organize, staff, equip, transport, test and evaluate, and (in the event of war) activate and deploy Mobile Maintenance Teams consisting of U S civil service volunteers. The teams would provide on-site emergency repairs sufficient to continue flights of US/NATO combat-damaged or otherwise disabled aircraft compelled to land in the Middle East, on Med islands, or in North Africa on return flights from battle zones.

Strategic Air Command bombers and their direct support aircraft in the active and — at that time — programmed inventory during the early-1950s included the B-47 Stratojet, a six-engine 4,000 mile range medium bomber which entered service in 1950; the B-52 Stratofortress, an eight- engine 8,000+ mile range heavy bomber scheduled to enter operations about 1955, and the C-97 Stratofreighter cargo and tanker versions with four piston-driven engines which had been in SAC fleet operations since about 1950, also late models B-50 and earlier B-29s from WW2.

Context

During the period covered by this memoir, the probability of a worldwide nuclear conflagration, sparked by a Cold War incident between US/NATO and the USSR, was considered to be high. The memories of WW2 were fresh in the minds of everyone. The U S confrontation with the USSR that brought on the Berlin Airlift, and its threat to world peace were of the gravest portent. The Korean 'police action,' another product of confrontations between USSR/Communist China and U S/NATO, was winding down. 'Viet Nam' was on the horizon.