The 115 Combat Group was set up at Souda in 1958, when 338 and 337 Fighter Bomber Squadrons arrived from 112 Combat Wing at Elefsis with the Republic F-84G Thunderjet. The field lies on the Akrotiri plateau, 18 km from Chania, looking down on Souda Bay, the deep natural harbour that has drawn navies to western Crete since Venetian times. In 1960, according to the wing history, the F-84G gave way to the swept-wing F-84F Thunderstreak.

340 Squadron, formed in 1953 at Elefsis, moved to Souda on 4 February 1960 and flew the REGEX and FLASH BACK exercises that year. The squadron history records flying exchanges with Turkey and Italy in 1962 and top NATO evaluation marks in 1962 and 1967. In 1961 the group gained the use of the shooting range at Maleme, the airfield west of Chania whose capture by German paratroops in May 1941 decided the Battle of Crete.

In 1964 the group became the 115 Combat Wing, and 340 Squadron was formally assigned to it. The wing spent the next decade as a NATO strike and fighter-bomber formation on the alliance’s south-eastern edge. 340 Squadron’s own history records it being reclassified as a strike squadron and then, in October 1966, returning to the fighter-bomber role, with a deployment to Italy for the SOUTHERN FLAG exercises in 1970. The wing’s motto, a line from Euripides, reads in the air force’s translation “Virtue is achieved through pain”.

After the Cyprus crisis of 1974 Greece rebuilt its strike force with American types, and Souda received the LTV A-7H Corsair II. The official history says that from the summer of 1975 the first all-weather bombing A-7s equipped 340, 345 and 347 Squadrons of 115 Combat Wing; 340 Squadron began receiving A-7H and two-seat TA-7H aircraft in August 1975. The wing records that 347 Squadron was activated in 1977 and was meant for permanent assignment to 110 Combat Wing at Larissa.

The Corsair was slow but carried a heavy load a long way, which suited a wing whose targets lay across open sea. 340 Squadron made NATO flying exchanges to West Germany in 1979 and to Italy in 1983 and 1987, and in 1990 it received a flight safety prize for an accident-free record. In 1992 it absorbed aircraft from 347 Squadron.

The end came in stages. 340 Squadron stopped flying on 30 January 2001. In 2002 the wing was reorganised to receive F-16s, the remaining A-7Hs passed to 116 Combat Wing at Araxos by 30 August, and 345 Squadron was deactivated. Between the last Corsairs leaving in August 2002 and 340 Squadron re-forming in March 2003, the wing had no front-line jets while the base was prepared for the new type. Greece flew its last Corsairs from Araxos until 2014, making the A-7 one of the longest-serving combat types in Hellenic service.

The move was not only about age. Wikipedia’s Hellenic Air Force article says that until 2001 Greece took part in NATO nuclear sharing with A-7s at Araxos, not Souda; no official source consulted connects Souda’s Corsairs to that role, and none is claimed here. What the record shows at Souda is a conventional strike wing whose A-7s trained over the sea for three decades, earned NATO evaluations and flew exchanges with allied air forces.

Souda’s F-16s came from the programme Lockheed Martin called Peace Xenia III: 50 new F-16 Block 52+ aircraft with an option for 10 more, exercised in September 2001, making 40 single-seaters and 20 two-seaters. They were fitted with conformal fuel tanks along the spine, chosen to give the range needed to cover Cyprus. The last were delivered on 8 June 2004.

340 Squadron, call sign FOX, re-formed with the new jets on 3 March 2003. 343 Squadron, call sign STAR, followed on 21 July 2003. 343 had never been a Crete unit before: it formed at Elefsis in September 1955 on the F-86E Sabre, flew F-86D all-weather interceptors from 1961 and F-5A/B Freedom Fighters from March 1966, and had been suspended in March 2001.

The Block 52+ is the type now being brought to F-16V Viper standard in Greece, a programme that passed its 60th aircraft in September 2026 according to the air force service file on this site. The sources we could reach do not break the programme down by squadron, so how many of Souda’s jets have already been converted is not stated here. The Zeus F-16 display team was founded at the wing in 2010 to represent the air force at air shows at home and abroad; its current parent squadron is not confirmed by the official pages used here.

Souda also hosts a United States Navy installation: Naval Support Activity Souda Bay. It is American, not NATO, and the US Navy describes it as located within the gates of a Greek air force base. From 1962 to 1969 the only American unit operating locally was a ship, USS Tallahatchie County. A naval detachment of 16 people under a petty officer first class was commissioned on 28 May 1969.

The detachment grew to 96 people by August 1972 and became a Naval Support Activity on 1 October 1980. In December 1990 its mission was extended to support US Air Force and Navy reconnaissance flights, and by 1994 it counted 17 officers and 210 enlisted personnel. It occupies roughly 110 acres, which the Institute of Current World Affairs describes as a 1.1 km strip on the north side of the Greek base.

By 2023 about 1,000 people worked or lived on it, including families, contractors and Greek employees, and it put an estimated $158 million into the local economy in 2022. Current US Navy news items name a detachment of the US Air Force’s 95th Reconnaissance Squadron and the US Army’s 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment among the units working there.

The American presence rests on the US–Greek Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement of 1990. According to a 2017 Washington Times commentary it was renewed annually from 1998; the State Department says it was updated in January 2020, and the Institute of Current World Affairs reports that a protocol signed in October 2021 extended its term from one year to five. The two dates refer to successive amendments.

The naval base across the bay has the Marathi pier, which the ICWA describes as the only deep-water pier in the Mediterranean able to berth an aircraft carrier. Carriers have been a steady presence since December 2021, and after the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 two carrier strike groups deployed to the region with support from Souda.

Two NATO bodies share the peninsula. The NATO Missile Firing Installation on Akrotiri was created under an agreement signed by eight allies in 1964 and is now funded by Greece, Germany and the Netherlands for air defence live firing. The NATO Maritime Interdiction Operational Training Centre at the naval base says it was officially established in 2008; Wikipedia gives 2007.

Civil flights moved from Maleme to the military field at Souda in 1959, and the airport began international flights in 1974. A terminal of 14,650 square metres, designed for 1.35 million passengers a year, opened in 1996, and since 11 April 2017 the civil side has been run by Fraport Greece under a 40-year concession. In 2024 it handled 3,952,126 passengers, the sixth-busiest airport in Greece.

The runway is where the three users meet. The US Navy’s own staff told the ICWA that it gets busy in summer, when commercial flights to Chania multiply. Its length is itself a small puzzle: the airport data cited by Wikipedia give 3,347 m, while GlobalSecurity gives 11,738 ft (about 3,578 m) of concrete. The Greek AIP, which would settle it, could not be retrieved.

Colonel Christos Grigoroudis, commanding the 115 Combat Wing in 2023, summed up the arrangement: the commanders of every facility are a few kilometres apart and must coordinate closely. Allied fighters exercise here too: in January 2015 the US Air Force’s 480th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron trained with the wing, according to RealClearDefense. On 10 June 2018 even Air Force One stopped here to refuel. Local politics follow the runway too: the Communist Party of Greece protests regularly against the American and NATO presence.