The idea of an airfield at Kecskemét was first put forward in 1932, construction started in 1935 and the aerodrome opened in 1937, in the flat middle of the Great Hungarian Plain. The Ministry of Defence’s own chronology records that after Hungary entered the Second World War on 26 June 1941, German reconnaissance squadrons were stationed here. In the summer of 1944 Allied air forces bombed the airfield several times, leaving it badly damaged.

Repairs began slowly in 1948 and flight training resumed in the autumn of 1949. The airfield’s modern identity dates from the early 1950s, when Hungary built a jet fighter force on Soviet lines. The 66th Fighter Aviation Division formed a regiment at Kunmadaras in 1951 with Yak-9, Yak-11, Yak-18 and Zlín 381 aircraft, and MiG-15 conversion under Soviet pilots and technicians began on 1 July 1951.

In October 1952 the largest national military exercise since the war moved two squadrons to Kecskemét, and on 1 November 1952 the headquarters of the 66th Fighter Aviation Division and the 62nd Fighter Regiment transferred here from Kunmadaras. Six years later, on 1 November 1958, the 59th Fighter Aviation Regiment was formed at Kecskemét, the number the unit carries again today.

By the revolution of October 1956 Kecskemét was the seat of a fighter division. It is also a place where the uprising was put down harshly. English Wikipedia, citing the historian Paul Lendvai, records that on 26 October the Hungarian Army’s Third Corps under Major General Lajos Gyurkó shot seven protesters outside the state security office and jail in the town, and that on Gyurkó’s order air force fighters fired on demonstrators in several towns. Which airfield those fighters flew from is not established in the sources checked here.

Between 4 and 9 November, Marshal Zhukov reported the entire Hungarian air force disarmed. The fighter division did not survive the revolution. When the service was rebuilt from 1957, Kecskemét again became a fighter station, and the 59th regiment formed there on 1 November 1958. In August 1962 the 1st and 2nd squadrons received 28 MiG-21 and MiG-21U aircraft, the regiment’s first supersonic jets.

By 1975 all three squadrons flew MiG-21s, the 1st squadron converting to the MiG-21MF, and the MF re-equipment was complete in 1979. In the early 1980s renovation work sent the squadrons temporarily to Szolnok and Mezőkövesd. The end of the Cold War shrank the regiment: in 1990 the third flying and maintenance squadrons were disbanded, and the Defence Ministry chronology records that the MiG-21s were withdrawn from Kecskemét in 1994, once MiG-29s had replaced them.

Hungary’s MiG-29s came as settlement of part of Russia’s state debt to Hungary. The first eight, six single-seaters and two two-seaters, landed at Kecskemét on 15 October 1993 and all 28 had arrived by the end of November. Selected pilots spent four months training in Russia, at Krasnodar and Kushchyovskaya. The 2nd squadron went on combat alert on 1 September 1994 and the 1st on 1 September 1995, the latter in the presence of the defence minister.

In 1995 the Kecskemét pilots fired live missiles for the first time, R-60s over the Baltic Sea against infrared flare targets dropped by Polish Sukhois. The Fulcrums flew with the “Puma” and “Dongó” squadrons, names inherited from the Second World War. Pilots valued the type in close combat, but its radar and missiles lagged behind Western fighters. About 90 pilots flew the type, and the fleet logged just under 18,000 flying hours in 17 years.

The type had one fatal accident: in 1998 Zsolt Rácz, posthumously promoted colonel, was killed flying aircraft 17 during a display flight. Two other pilots ejected from damaged aircraft and survived. The unofficial farewell came on 7 December 2010. Eight of the retired aircraft were offered for sale in 2011 with bidding from US$18 million, and in July 2026 the ministry said a complete MiG-29 and parts stored at Kecskemét had been sold lawfully, not stolen.

Hungary signed the Gripen contract with Sweden’s Defence Materiel Administration on 21 December 2001. On 7 February 2003 Saab announced a SEK 2 billion order for the lease of 14 NATO-adapted Gripens for ten years, with air-to-air refuelling probes, laser-guided bomb capability, English-language cockpit displays and NATO communications. The amendment was built on the December 2001 contract for adaptation and support. Hungarian pilot training began in Sweden on 5 January 2005, and the aircraft were prepared at Saab’s plant in Linköping.

The first five aircraft landed at Kecskemét on 21 March 2006, all 14 were in service by December 2007, and the Gripen took over the alert duty on 15 December 2008. In February 2024 Saab announced four more Gripen Cs, bought outright, with upgrades and support beyond 2035. Two arrived on 30 April 2026 and the last two on 24 June 2026, giving 16 Gripen Cs and two Ds.

The fleet has had bad days. In 2015 one two-seater was wrecked in the Czech Republic and a single-seater belly-landed at home. On 24 August 2026 a Kecskemét Gripen on a training sortie crashed on military land near Szolnok; the pilot ejected and was flown to the Military Hospital in Budapest. The defence minister said a very valuable aircraft had been lost but that no civilian was hurt, and the flight recorder went to Sweden for analysis.

Kecskemét is more than a fighter base. The An-26 transport squadron moved here in December 2005, and the Defence Forces list Airbus A319 and Dassault Falcon 7X aircraft on the wing’s strength after the transport fleet was modernised in 2018. The Embraer KC-390 first visited Kecskemét for testing on 12 April 2024; the first Hungarian aircraft, 610, arrived in autumn 2024 and the second, 611, on 21 November 2025.

Jet training came home as well. The wing flew an L-39 Albatros training squadron from late 1993 until 2009. On 30 May 2025 the first three Aero L-39NG Skyfox trainers were handed over at Kecskemét, of 12 ordered in 2022: eight trainers and four reconnaissance aircraft, with deliveries due by 2028. Three Hungarian instructor pilots and 16 technicians trained with Aero Vodochody beforehand. The Skyfox restores advanced jet training inside Hungary for the first time since the L-39 Albatros left in 2009.

The base is also the home of Hungary’s international air show. A jubilee show on 22–23 August 1998 marked 150 years of the Hungarian army and 60 of its military aviation. The 2021 show, planned for 28–29 August, needed about 5,000 personnel on site. The 2023 edition was cancelled because of the war in Ukraine, and on 3 September 2026 the minister announced its return in August 2027.

The unit took Dezső Szentgyörgyi’s name on 28 April 1990 and became the 59th Szentgyörgyi Dezső Tactical Fighter Regiment in 1991. On 1 October 2000 it was reorganised as the 59th Szentgyörgyi Dezső Air Base, and on 1 December 2004 the fixed-wing units were reorganised under it from Szolnok. Szentgyörgyi, born in 1915, served in communist prisons from 1950 to 1956 and died on 28 August 1971 as captain of the Malév Il-18 that crashed on approach to Copenhagen.

On 1 January 2023 the unit became a brigade-level air wing and was renamed vitéz Szentgyörgyi Dezső 101st, the number recalling the Second World War 101st “Puma” fighter group in which he served. On 1 September 2026, among 13 units given back historic names, it reverted to the 59th Szentgyörgyi Dezső Air Wing without the “vitéz” title. Defence Minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi told soldiers to be proud of the numbers and names they had before 2023.

The wing’s listed tasks begin with continuous readiness against airspace violations, followed by search and rescue, visual air reconnaissance and air support. It is commanded by Brigadier General Ferenc Könczöl. The ministry records more than twenty of the wing’s pilots and officers serving abroad, including Baltic Air Policing deployments in 2015, 2019 and 2022; a fourth rotation began at Šiauliai on 30 July 2025. At home, a pair of Gripens was scrambled on 29 August 2026 after a man took a light aircraft from Kalocsa without permission; it force-landed near Gerjen within minutes.