Word: shaibah
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...Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) surveillance plane had taken off from its base in Saudi Arabia, which operated the electronics-laden Boeing 707 jointly with the U.S. On radar, the combined U.S.-Saudi crew detected a single Iraqi Mirage F-1 aircraft as it lifted off from the Shaibah military airport ten miles southwest of Basra at around 8 p.m. Heading southeast along Saudi Arabia's coast as Iraqi planes often do, the Mirage flew much closer to Bahrain than was normal. Suddenly, the fighter jerked into a sharp left turn, heading east. The Iraqi pilot apparently had spotted...
Chief British military concerns in Iraq currently are the big R.A.F. bases at Shaibah and Habbaniya. If Britain could build a new "little NATO,"the bases could safely be turned over to it. The planes and men would remain largely British. But they would be there not by imposition of a "colonial" power, but as partners in mutual defense. Thus, the West would gain more solid bastion in the shifting political sands of the Middle East...
Another agreement with Britain, almost completed, provided for improvement and U.S. use of R.A.F. bases protecting Africa: Bengasi and Castel Benito in Libya; Habbaniya and Shaibah in Iraq; airfields around the Suez Canal; Amman in Jordan; Cyprus and Malta in the Mediterranean. With the new bases, a U.S. plane taking off from Cyprus, for example, would have to fly only 1,500 miles to Moscow, 1,000 miles to Baku. The U.S. already held giant Wheelus Field near Tripoli (also being enlarged), and an airbase at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia...
...were confined to two fields where they had been established under the treaty for years: Habbania, on the west bank of the Euphrates, 65 miles from Bagdad, a huge airdrome with cantonments for about 5,000 men, but equipped only with small guns and some 50 antique biplanes; and Shaibah, near Basra, basing a bomber squadron and an armored-car section...