Taszár’s aviation history begins in 1928, when plans for an airfield serving Kaposvár were submitted and building started to designs by Frigyes Hefty. The field, near the village railway station, opened with a ceremony on 1 September 1929. According to the Defence Forces’ chronicle it cost 300,000 pengő including its hangars, and at first it handled only commercial flying, a small regional aerodrome in the rolling farmland of Somogy County.

The military moved in during the 1930s. A commander, Lieutenant Colonel Emil Szörényi Staic, was appointed in 1935, and in 1936 the aerodrome passed to the Royal Hungarian Defence Forces, which began to enlarge it. From 1939 until 1944 the 3rd reconnaissance squadron was stationed here, and a modernisation programme from 1942 strengthened the runway so that it could take bombers, according to the Defence Forces’ sixtieth-anniversary history.

The war ended the first airfield. Before retreating, German forces destroyed the hangars and the installations, and on 2 December 1944 Soviet troops occupied what was left. In December 1945 the site was handed back to the new Hungarian armed forces, but the old field by the station was never rebuilt as a combat base. Taszár’s jet-age identity would come from a completely new airfield on the other side of the village.

Construction of a new airfield east of the village began in 1949, and the Defence Forces record that forced labour was used; the chronicle counts 1,300 labour servicemen on the site in 1951–1952. The result was a concrete runway 2,500 metres long and 70 metres wide. The airfield opened on 11 November 1950, when the 50th Fighter Regiment, formed at Tököl-Szilágyi, moved in with a mix of Yak-9s, Yak-11s, Yak-18s, Z-381s and Arado Ar 96s.

Conversion to the MiG-15 began in April 1952 under Soviet instructors, and radar-equipped MiG-17PF night fighters arrived in the summer of 1955, serving until 1957. The revolution of 1956 hit the base directly: on 1 November Soviet forces surrounded the airfield and stopped all flying, and on 4 November its personnel were disarmed. When the air force was rebuilt from 1 April 1957, Taszár was given one mixed squadron.

On 1 November 1958 the 31st Fighter Regiment was formed under Lieutenant Colonel József Varga. After MiG-19PM training in the Soviet Union it put 12 MiG-19s into service in 1960; 12 MiG-21F-13s followed from 1962, MiG-21PFs in 1964, MiG-21MFs in 1973 and MiG-21bis from 1975. In 1983–1984 the 101st Reconnaissance Squadron arrived with 12 Su-22M3s and 3 Su-22UM3s, and a second concrete runway was built. The two Defence Forces articles differ on the Su-22 year, 1983 or 1984.

The end of communism opened the gates. From 1990 to 1992 the Corvin Foundation organised public events at Taszár: an open day in 1990, the “Rendezvous with Open Sky” show in 1991 and, in 1992, an international air show that the Defence Forces say drew hundreds of thousands of visitors. On 11 March 1991 the Somogy branch of the Hungarian veteran pilots’ association was founded in Kaposvár to keep the regiment’s traditions.

On 1 November 1991 the units were reorganised as the 31st Kapos Tactical Air Regiment with three squadrons: the 1st “Turul” and the 2nd (whose name the Defence Forces give as “Witch”) on MiG-21bis, and the 3rd (“Wasp”) on Su-22M3s. The regiment’s pilots formed the Sky Hussars display team, which performed at the International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in England in 1993.

The American arrival ended Taszár as a fighter base. On 8 December 1995, on the orders of the Chief of Defence, the regiment’s aircraft began moving to Pápa. On 15 December 1996 the fighter regiment was withdrawn from readiness and the MH Kapos Base took its place under Colonel Zoltán Pintér. The regiment itself was disbanded in spring 1997: one Defence Forces article dates the new base to 30 April 1997, the other prints the impossible date “31 April 1997” for the disbandment.

Hungary’s Parliament agreed on 8 November 1995 to support the peace operation in the former Yugoslavia. A 45-strong IFOR assessment team inspected Taszár on 18 November, and the Defence Forces date the first American landing to 9 December 1995, a C-130E with 57 soldiers; GlobalSecurity gives 25 November 1995 for the first US forces. The units were American: US Army Europe (Forward), under Lieutenant General John N. Abrams until October 1996, renamed the US National Support Element in February 1997.

Taszár was not NATO-owned; it was a Hungarian base lent to US forces operating under NATO command in Bosnia. The US Air Force ran airlift through the 4400th Operations Squadron (Provisional), with three or four C-130s a day from Ramstein and surges of up to 20 aircraft, C-5s, C-141s, C-17s and airline charters, to rotate about 4,000 peacekeepers. GlobalSecurity also records that Predator drones flew from the base.

The first weeks were rough. Stars and Stripes reported on 7 January 1996 that the contractor Brown and Root had three days instead of two weeks to prepare, and that troops arriving in mid-December found too few beds and little heating. By late January nearly 7,000 people were on base, some 3,300 of them the permanent force, in a tent city with a dining tent serving 3,500 meals a day. The Defence Forces give about 3,000 US personnel for 1996.

Numbers fell as SFOR succeeded IFOR on 20 December 1996. GlobalSecurity puts the population below 600 by the end of Operation Joint Guard in June 1998 and the National Support Element at about 250 during Operation Joint Forge; in late 2000 it was renamed US Army Support Element Taszár. The US flag was lowered on 30 June 2004, and the Hungarian Kapos Base locked its gate on 31 December 2005.

Hungary joined NATO in March 1999, and within weeks Taszár was a combat base again, though not for Hungarian jets. More than 20 US Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets from Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina, arrived on 23 May 1999 to fly for Joint Task Force Noble Anvil, the American part of NATO’s Operation Allied Force. One squadron, VMFA(AW)-533 with two-seat F/A-18Ds, flew 111 combat sorties and a further 82 after the 11 June ceasefire.

The last American mission was the strangest. In December 2002 Hungary approved a US request to train up to 3,000 Iraqi exiles at Taszár. The Hungarian Defence Ministry, through its spokesman, set conditions: no weapons heavier than handguns and no deployment with combat units. Under Task Force Warrior, US Army reservists taught self-defence, first aid, mine awareness, map reading and the Geneva Conventions, then civil-affairs and liaison skills, funded from US$97 million under the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.

Recruitment fell far short. A US Army military police task force with working dogs deployed to guard the camp in February 2003, and a second class finished in March with instructors drawn from 31 units. According to the Wikipedia account of the programme, citing a Congressional Research Service study, about US$63 million was spent to train 69 men; Major General David Barno ended the programme on 1 April 2003. The trainee total is given as a single figure by that source and was not confirmed elsewhere.