Kenitra Air Base was previously known as
Craw Field, named for Medal of Honor recipient Colonel
Demas T. Craw,
USAAF, who was killed while attempting to deliver a message from American General Lucian Truscott to the Vichy French Commander at
Port Lyautey requesting that the French surrender. Although imprisoned, Craw's interpreter, Major
Pierpont Hamilton, negotiated the French surrender during
Operation Torch and the airport was eventually secured for the Allied forces. Pierpont Hamilton also received the Medal of Honor for his actions. The air base at Port Lyautey served as a staging area for many Allied operations in North Africa and the
Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) during World War II. For the first three months after capture the 21st Engineer Aviation Regiment worked on the airfield. In Feb. 1943 the
Seabees of the 120th Naval Construction Battalion took over all construction activities. The United States Navy (USN)
Fleet Air Wing 15 and the
United States Army Air Forces (USAAF)
480th Antisubmarine Group were based there with specialized aircraft including
PBY Catalinas,
B-24 Liberators, and Goodyear-built
K-ships (blimps) used to search for German
U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean and especially in the shallow waters of the Straits of Gibraltar where radar and
magnetic anomaly detection were viable. Craw Field was the final destination of the six K-ships of USN Blimp Squadron ZP-14 (Blimpron 14, the Africa Squadron) that made the first transatlantic crossing of non-rigid airships in 1944. Following World War II, the airfield was expanded to a major US Naval Air Station in 1951 and renamed
NAS Port Lyautey. In this capacity, it primarily supported land-based US naval reconnaissance aircraft monitoring Soviet naval operations in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean. Aircraft operating from NAS Port Lyautey included the
P4M Mercator in the 1950s, the
P-2 Neptune in the 1950s and 1960s, and the
P-3 Orion,
EP-3 Aries and
EA-3 Skywarrior in the 1960s and 1970s until the installation's closure as a USN facility and transfer to the Royal Moroccan Air Force in 1977. On 16 August 1972 a
coup attempt was launched by the Minister of National Defense,
Mohamed Oufkir, assisted by
Mohamed Amekrane, commander of Kenitra. Four
Northrop F-5 fighter jets from Kenitra attacked a
Boeing 727 carrying King
Hassan II of Morocco as he entered Moroccan airspace when returning from a visit to France. The passenger plane was riddled by cannon rounds, but was able to land safely at
Rabat-Salé Airport. The king was unhurt. Savage reprisals were taken against the participants in the failed coup attempt. In 2001, the airbase was depicted in the film
Black Hawk Down, standing in for
Aden Adde International Airport in Somalia. ==Facilities==