History
Prior to June 1970, the United States Air Force (USAF) used the facility, then known as Wheelus Air Base.
Subsequently, the facility was known as Okba Ben Nafi Air Base, a Libyan People's Air Force (LPAF) installation. In 1986, the base was a primary target of Operation El Dorado Canyon (see below), a US retaliatory strike against Libya for Libyan missile attacks on US aircraft over Libya's claimed territorial waters in the Mediterranean Sea and alleged Libyan involvement in alleged terrorist attacks on US servicemen in Europe.
Read more about this topic: Mitiga International Airport
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“I assure you that in our next class we will concern ourselves solely with the history of Egypt, and not with the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies.”
—Griffin Jay, and Reginald LeBorg. Prof. Norman (Frank Reicher)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)