Incirlik Air Base

Incirlik Air Base (Turkish: İncirlik Hava Üssü) (IATA: UAB, ICAO: LTAG) is a Turkish air base of slightly more than 3320 ac (1335 ha), located in the İncirlik quarter of the city of Adana, Turkey. The base is within an urban area of 1.7 million people, 10 km (6 mi) east of the city core, and 32 km (20 mi) inland from the Mediterranean Sea. The United States Air Force and the Turkish Air Force are the primary users of the air base, although it is at times also used by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Saudi Air Force. The base is also the home of the 74th Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment (Patriot unit) of the Spanish Army.

Incirlik Air Base is the home of the 10th Air Wing (Ana Jet Üssü or AJÜ) of the 2nd Air Force Command (Hava Kuvvet Komutanlığı) of the Turkish Air Force (Türk Hava Kuvvetleri). Other wings of this command are located in Merzifon (LTAP), Malatya/Erhaç (LTAT) and Diyarbakır (LTCC).

Incirlik Air Base has a U.S. Air Force (USAF) complement of about five thousand airmen, with several hundred airmen from the Royal Air Force and Turkish Air Force also present, as of late 2002. The primary unit stationed at Incirlik Air Base is the 39th Air Base Wing (39 ABW) of the U.S. Air Force. Incirlik Air Base has one 3,048 m (10,000 ft)-long runway, located among about 57 hardened aircraft shelters. Tactical nuclear weapons are stored at the base. Among them are "up to" 50 B61 nuclear bombs.

The word incirlik (pronounced [indʒiɾlic]) means "fig tree grove", in the Turkish language.

The decision to build the Incirlik Air Base was made during the Second Cairo Conference in December 1943, but construction only began after the end of the Second World War. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began the work in the spring of 1951. The U.S. Air Force initially planned to use the base as an emergency staging and recovery site for medium and heavy bombers. The Turkish General Staff and the U.S. Air Force signed a joint-use agreement for the new Air Base in December 1954. On 21 February 1955, the Air Base was officially named Adana Air Base, with the 7216th Air Base Squadron as the host unit. This Air Base was renamed the Incirlik Air Base on 28 February 1958.

The early years of its existence proved the value of the presence of the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, not only in countering the threat of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but also in responding to crises in the Middle East, such as in Lebanon and Israel.

Project 119L, a public U.S. Air Force weather balloon launching program served as a cover story (disinformation) for the true objective of the Incirlik Air Base: to mount strategic reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union. Under the codename "GENETRIX", these balloon launches were carried out beginning in February 1956.

Following initial weather balloon operations, pilots began flying American Lockheed U-2 aircraft reconnaissance missions as part of "Operation Overflight" by late 1957. These included nonstop flights back and forth between Incirlik and the NATO Air Base at the Norwegian town of Bodø starting in 1958. In addition, U.S. Air Force Boeing RB-47H Stratojets and U.S. Navy P4M-1Q Mercator and A3D-1Q Skywarrior reconnaissance flights operated from Incirlik into Soviet-claimed air space over the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and as far east as Afghanistan.