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ISSUE 210 - March 2012
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168 Hours

By David Rose
San Diego, California

The rooftop bar of the Hotel Casablanca in Morocco was a pleasant place to be that late spring day of 1961. It’s Friday evening and we’re enjoying the sun setting over the distant South Atlantic. We’ll be leaving in a few minutes for our, hopefully, last dinner at the Sphinx Club, a notoriously infamous ‘dinner club’ just south of Rabat. I’ve finished the last of several Screwdrivers and am enjoying the atmosphere of actually spending another day in the exotic city of ‘Casablanca’.

The movie of the same name has been my favorite since the summer of 1943 which found me in attendance for the first time. I’ve probably seen the thing a dozen times since. I try to forget about it, then the urge comes over me and I ‘play it again’ (pardon the ….). I even like Woody Allen’s “Play it again Sam”, his 1972 reverential homage to it, but I draw the line at Bugs Bunny’s ‘Carrotblanca’.

We had flown our B-52 out of Robbins AFB five days previously on what was fragged to be a twenty four hour “Chrome Dome” airborne alert sortie. I was in the midst of my thirteen month stint flying the BUFF and airborne alert sorties were a routine part of the duty. We’d take off and loiter at points outside the Soviet Union for twenty four hours or so providing a rapid first strike or retaliation capability in case anyone harbored ideas of launching a nuclear war.

The routes we flew changed every month and this month had found us flying directly to Spain, refueling, flying back and forth over the Med a few times, refueling again and heading home. Total time? Twenty Four hours. Fun stuff.

This week the first part had gone ok, but we lost one of two HF radios while just North of Algeria. Then while reporting to SAC headquarters in Omaha (everything an armed B-52 did went through Omaha), the second HF started breaking up and shortly thereafter we were out of HF capability. Not so bad ordinarily, but we were carrying four MK28’s and two Hound Dog missiles; roughly six megatons of nuclear bombs and you just didn’t go wandering about the world with nukes on board.

In order to be in constant contact with SAC, and thus under ‘Positive Control’, you needed HF radios with their extreme range capability. No HF – no overwater flight for sure. We began a long series of communications with the SAC command post at Torrejon Air Base outside Madrid and assumed we’d be spending the night there while they fixed the HF’s. Torrejon had a large SAC contingent and often hosted SAC reflex operations; no question; we’d be stopping in.

Diverting a nuclear armed aircraft from its planned flight is a really big deal. Hours went by with us orbiting southern Spain awaiting a decision. About then we lost one of the VHF radios. Then another.

Now, a B-52 has more radios than you can count. HF, VHF, ADF, FM, AM, LF plus some others I’ve forgotten about and we were losing them all. In short order we were down to one guard transceiver and relaying communications through a nearby KC-135 tanker. With that they promptly ordered us to descend to five thousand feet and proceed directly to Nouasseur Air Base outside, you guessed it, Casablanca, Morocco. It did make some sense. SAC had been using the base for years as a forward staging area for the B36 and B47 as well as the B52. After flying for over twenty four hours, their twelve thousand foot runway looked just fine to us.

So up to now everything was sort of routine. Other armed flights have been diverted like ours with no issues. And for now there were no issues. We reached Nouasseur no problem, signed in to ops and were assign quarters. There was even a little Fiat available for transient crews and the Ops clerk recommended that if we were interested, great food could be found at a place called “The Sphinx Club”, about 30 miles up near Rabat. Total logged time so far – 26 hours.

It was six local time by the time we showered and changed and the five of us, our gunner couldn’t be talked into going, piled into the little Fiat and headed north.

We had no trouble finding the place; it stood out like a fortress near the road; a huge, square, stone structure with an enormous twelve foot high double door. The whole thing looked medieval and was made more so by a sliding peep hole. A little light knocking brought a pair of eyes to the peep hole which were attached to a head too huge to be seen through the hole. One look at the faces of these five smiling infidels and the door swung open offering entry to a small courtyard. The man inside the gate must have been 7 feet tall and really enormous, but wearing a smile as large as himself, he ushered us toward a pair of beautifully engraved glass doors leading into ‘The Sphinx Club’.

There was no one in sight as we proceeded through the entrance and into the lounge. Save for the lady behind the bar the room was deserted. You couldn’t help but feel at ease, the place was sumptuous, and with no one else present, we were not intimidated by our palatial surroundings. Soon we were in easy conversation with the lady, ordering drinks and discussing dinner. Menus were produced and we were shown to a table. A waitress arrived speaking English with such an engaging French accent that we were all quite at home by the time dinner began to arrive. The very generous booze to mix ratio of our drinks enhanced the experience and three hours passed before we found our way back to the bar. It was then that we took note of the change in atmosphere; the bar was now populated by a number of men being attended to by an equivalent number of ladies. Yup. The Sphinx Club was something more than just an intriguing bar and restaurant, and we were now the objects of more than just an interest in taking drink orders. In fact, as there were so few ‘customers’, we became engaged in quite a lengthy conversation with two of the women and learned that they live at the club for three months of the year, are well cared for, then return to France.

Most of all? The food was amazing.

Back at the base we learned that we would launch at 3PM local time the following day for a repeat of the previous sortie. Two trips over the Med, refuel, two more trips back and forth, refuel and head home. Another twenty four hours. No sweat.

We were off on schedule and fell right into the routine of the mission. 17 hours later we learned that our radios had probably been OK. That it was the avionics pressurization system that had caused our problems. The HF’s quit almost together. After orbiting Torrejon for another ten hours we were once again sent to Nouasseur. Total logged time now – 49 hours.

Same routine, pick up the car, shower and change, head for “The Club”. It was a beautiful spring evening and we were received like old friends at “the Club”. Once again great food, great drinks, and a really interesting show as the evening progressed and the activity in the bar picked up. Even though none of us became ‘customers’, we were nevertheless treated like family and the evening could not have been more pleasant.

Next day we were set up for pretty much the same routine. The bird’s avionics pressurization wasn’t fixed but there was an alternative plan. We would join up with a buddy, (another B-52) fly the sortie, and in his company, be escorted across the pond back to the States. No sweat.

It all went well other than our ‘buddy’ had real trouble refueling the first time around. It took him over an hour to take on the 120,000 pounds of JP he needed. Then on the last refueling his system simply refused to take on fuel. Try as he might, no gas. Ten hours later we were on final approach to guess where. Total logged time to this point - 73 hours.

Need I relate the details? We about wore out the little Fiat. I don’t think it was built to take on 5 crew members bent on a few drinks and a raucous good time at what was now “Our Club”.

We hurdled off into the night and enjoyed the best dinner of all. As though the afternoon drinks we enjoyed on the roof of the Casablanca Hotel weren’t enough, the lady at the bar (Evette) gave us one free drink after another and it was late when we set off in an inebriated state. Fortunately our EW Officer wasn’t much of a drinker and always ended up driving us home.

The rest is mundane. They had attacked our pressurization problem in earnest and had us ready to launch once again at 3 PM local time. We loaded up all the paraphernalia we had found time to buy in town, embroidered leather camel saddles, brass trays, cases of the local beer, water pipes, serapes and who knows what else, all crammed into the lower level entry area (a B-52 is surprisingly small inside) and we were off.

25 hours later we were on final at Robbins. Total time overall 167 hours.

Total time logged in less than one full week - 104 hours – it must be some kind of record.

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