Cairo West was not built as a fighter base but as one of the many numbered landing grounds the RAF spread across the Nile Valley and the Western Desert. Air of Authority records it opening in 1942 under the name Kilo 26 and becoming Landing Ground 224 in May 1942; English Wikipedia dates the airfield to 1941. A station headquarters opened in January 1943.

After the Second Battle of El Alamein the Wellington bombers of No. 104 Squadron operated from it, and English Wikipedia lists Blenheims, Baltimores, Halifaxes and Spitfire variants among the types that passed through. On 1 August 1945 it took the name RAF Cairo West as No 10 Staging Post on the trunk routes east; No. 620 Squadron flew Halifax A.7s here from March to June 1946. The station headquarters disbanded on 10 December 1946; the airfield later passed to the Egyptian Air Force.

On the morning of 5 June 1967 Israel opened the Six-Day War with Operation Focus, a surprise attack on Egypt’s airfields. English Wikipedia, citing Israeli accounts, says the first wave of 183 aircraft struck 11 airfields at 7:45 and destroyed 197 Egyptian aircraft, and a second wave destroyed 107 more. Cairo West was among the bases hit and was put out of service for a time.

How many aircraft Egypt lost is disputed: English Wikipedia’s Six-Day War article gives 338 Egyptian aircraft destroyed and 100 pilots killed but notes that the number is contested. Its figures for the Tu-16 bomber force differ between articles — all 30 in one, 23 of 25 in another. Which bombers were destroyed at which base is not established in the sources checked, and no base-by-base figure is given here.

After the 1973 war and the break with Moscow, Egypt’s first American combat aircraft came to Cairo West. Under the September 1977 Peace Pharaoh agreement the United States supplied 35 F-4E Phantoms from the 31st Tactical Fighter Wing, with Sparrow, Sidewinder and Maverick missiles, for US$594 million. English Wikipedia places them with 76 and 78 Squadrons of 222 Fighter Regiment at Cairo West.

The switch was hard. English Wikipedia says that during 1982 an average of only nine F-4s were serviceable, a 26 per cent rate, until US technical help from 1985 improved matters; seven more F-4s arrived in 1988. In July 1980, during Operation Proud Phantom, twelve F-4Es and at least 400 personnel of the USAF’s 347th Tactical Fighter Wing deployed from Georgia to Cairo West. The Egyptian Phantoms were in storage or reserve by 2018, by which time F-16s had long since taken over the fighter role.

Exercise Bright Star grew directly out of the 1978 Camp David Accords. The first, Bright Star 81, ran from October to December 1980, and English Wikipedia says the US deployments have usually been centred at the large Cairo West Air Base. About 9,000 Americans took part in 1985; by 1999 the exercise had 11 nations and 70,000 personnel. Fourteen USAF personnel died when a C-141 Starlifter crashed on a night approach during Bright Star 81; the sources checked do not say at which airfield.

The relationship had its interruptions: Bright Star 12 was postponed after the 2011 revolution, and President Obama cancelled the exercise planned for September 2013. In 2003 the 487th Air Expeditionary Wing deployed here from March to May during the invasion of Iraq. Since 2017 the centre of Bright Star has moved to the Mohamed Naguib Military Base at al-Hammam, west of Alexandria, which President al-Sisi inaugurated on 22 July 2017 as the largest military base in the Middle East and Africa, and Egypt Independent reported in 2023 that air bases across the country also took part.