The airfield began as a French maintenance site: in 1953, during the war against the Việt Minh, the French Air Force set up an overhaul facility here for its F8F Bearcats. On 1 June 1955 it became a logistics support base for the new Republic of Vietnam Air Force, with a single runway of pierced steel planking about 5,700 ft long, according to English Wikipedia.

The American era started quietly. In October and November 1961 the advance party and then Detachment 9 of the USAF’s Farm Gate programme arrived, officially to train South Vietnamese crews; the first four B-26 Invaders followed at the end of December. By 1963 the detachment flew four SC-47s, four B-26s and eight T-28s. The same month the B-26s came, December 1961, the contractor RMK-BRJ began a concrete runway able to take jets, the investment that decided the base’s future.

On 5 August 1964, days after the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, 36 B-57B Canberras were ordered in from Clark Air Base in the Philippines. The arrival went badly: one crashed on approach and two skidded off the rain-soaked runway. Three months later, on 1 November 1964, Viet Cong gunners fired a 30-minute mortar barrage into the parked aircraft, destroying five B-57s, three A-1Hs and an HH-43 helicopter, damaging 13 more B-57s, and killing four Americans and two Vietnamese.

On 19 February 1965 the B-57s flew what Wikipedia calls the USAF’s first combat bombing mission of the war, against Viet Cong bases. Three months later came the worst day in the base’s history. On 16 May 1965 a bomb exploded accidentally on the flight line and set off a chain reaction that destroyed ten B-57s, two A-1Es and a US Navy F-8, damaged 25 RVNAF A-1s, killed 28 Americans and six Vietnamese and wounded more than 100. Among the dead was Major Robert G. Bell, who in 1959 had been one of the 32 finalists for NASA’s first astronaut group.

From 8 November 1965 the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing was the host unit, its F-100D Super Sabres flying close air support across the south until the wing was inactivated here on 15 March 1971. The base also tested new ideas: in October 1965 the 4503rd Tactical Fighter Squadron brought the F-5A to war under the Skoshi Tiger evaluation and flew about 1,500 sorties by the end of December, losing one aircraft to ground fire.

The attacks never stopped. On 12 May 1967, 53 rockets and more than 150 mortar and recoilless rifle rounds damaged or destroyed 49 American and South Vietnamese aircraft. When the Tet Offensive began, Viet Cong and northern troops broke into the perimeter on 31 January 1968 and F-100 pilots flew a controlled air strike on their own airfield. Wikipedia gives US losses as four killed, one dead of a heart attack and 26 wounded, and the attackers’ as 137 killed and 25 captured; one A-37 and one F-100 were destroyed and 17 aircraft damaged. The Smithsonian, which displays an F-100D from Biên Hòa at the Udvar-Hazy Center, says the attack was beaten off in less than a day.

On 15 April 1975 a northern sapper squad blew up the ammunition dump and four 130 mm guns began shelling the airfield; on 30 April the last South Vietnamese defenders, the 81st Rangers, marched towards Saigon to surrender, and the People’s Army of Vietnam took the base (English Wikipedia). Vietnam calls this the liberation of the South; former South Vietnamese and many Western sources call it the fall of Saigon.

Today Biên Hòa is a Su-30MK2 base. The service newspaper described Regiment 935 of Division 370 preparing a training sortie here in August 2026 and said the regiment had flown more than 700 sorties since January, by day and night, including maritime interception training. Its commander told the paper the regiment was focusing on training quality and flight safety. On 30 April 2025 the flypast for the 50th anniversary of reunification — seven Su-30MK2s, six Yak-130s and ten helicopters carrying the Party and national flags — took off from here.

During the war Agent Orange was stored and handled at Biên Hòa, and the soil and waterways around it were badly contaminated with dioxin. A ten-year clean-up began in 2019; Wikipedia gives USAID’s 2019 commitment as US$183 million, and ProPublica reported in March 2025 that the two governments had agreed more than US$430 million since 2019 and that about half a million cubic metres were to be excavated.

The project nearly stopped in 2025. ProPublica reported that stop-work orders issued in late January halted work in mid-February, that contracts were cancelled on 26 February and reinstated about a week later, and that contractors were working with skeleton crews. On 23 September 2026 Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defence and the US Embassy signed new project agreements; the service newspaper reported that 238,829 cubic metres of soil and sediment had been excavated by May 2026, of which 106,788 cubic metres above 1,000 ppt TEQ went to thermal treatment, and that about 41 hectares had been confirmed clean.