Did Dreux do anything in the cold war but haul cargo and practice troop and equipment drops? The closing of base and then the final closing were not the first problems we had with France. In 1959 De Gaulle decided that atomic weapons in France not under his control needed to be removed. Since we had built the fighter-bomber bases  in France to distance them from war gamed soviet attacks coming through west Germany we had a problem.

If you believe Wikipedia we immediately moved these squadrons to Germany. Didn't happen. Empty bases with good runways were not available. The short term solution was for the bomb cores to be removed from France and a system set up to restore them if it became necessary.This gave us enough time to free up bases in Germany for our fighter-bombers.

For the early part of my tour 59-61 at Dreux we had C-119's at a German Base (when I was involved it was Sembach.) with the nuclear cores in what was called birdcages. I don't remember how many but they were spaced about eight feet apart on both sides of the cargo area. The theory was that we would fly them to the bases in France when needed. To allow us to do this and survive we practiced a lot of what was called Low Level corridor.

This was a lot of fun - playing chase just off the top of the trees. It was a rule if the airplane got in trouble and we had to get out, one man went out with each core. This meant that we had more crew than normal. Everybody also got issued a 38 revolver or a colt 45 with a shoulder holster and six bullets. We were on 24/7 while we were there. We lived in the ops building with the firemen. It was a good deal in one way, the firemen got four meals a day. We spent most of our time playing cards but no one was volunteering for the  job.

322nd Air Division moved most of our cargo around Europe including parts for nuclear weapons. All nuclear parts had to escorted, that is they had to be handed from one person with a Top Secret with Nuclear Endorsement to another. All our flight engineers had this clearance. Our F100 complement in Europe included two planes with a dual seat arrangement. It was thought that at some point we might have to fly that seat with a nuclear part. This required us being sent to Weisbaden to be trained for the ejection seat and high altitude decompression. I never was required to do this and I don't know anyone who did. The closest I ever came was one time when we were at Torrejon, Spain and they were going to take me off my plane and send me to England with a part. At the last minute someone realized that the pilot of the F100 was fully qualified to escort the part.

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