Larissa sits in the middle of the Thessalian plain, flat farmland that suited aircraft from the very start. The 110 Combat Wing counts its history from 1912, when the Farman “Daedalus” landed here and the first air force company was set up. The Hellenic Air Force’s own history puts it plainly: in late September 1912 the “Aviators Company”, four officer pilots, was set up in Larissa, the first combat air unit in Greece.

The timing was not accidental. The First Balkan War was about to break out, and the Thessaly front ran north from here towards Ottoman Macedonia. The air force records that on 5 October 1912 the first war air reconnaissance mission took place on that front, flown, according to Wikipedia, by Lieutenant Dimitrios Kamberos. The official page does not say from which field the sortie took off, so this page does not claim that detail either.

Between the wars the airfield grew into a permanent station. It became the 2nd Aircraft Regiment in 1928, the 2nd Larissa Group in 1932 and Larissa Air Base in 1934, four years after the Air Ministry made the air force an independent service. When Italy attacked in October 1940, Larissa was one of the main Greek air bases, alongside Sedes, Dekelia, Faleron, Eleusis, Nea Anchialos and Maleme.

In March 1941 the Royal Air Force moved fighters north to meet the German attack everyone expected. No. 33 Squadron, flying Hawker Hurricanes and commanded since 12 March by Squadron Leader Marmaduke “Pat” Pattle, South African-born, began operating from Larissa on 23 March. Pattle was already the leading Commonwealth ace of the Greek campaign, with most of his claims made against the Italians over Albania.

Germany invaded on 6 April. Over the following week Pattle’s claims mounted against Messerschmitts, Junkers and Dorniers. On 13 April Messerschmitt Bf 109s strafed Larissa as three Hurricanes were taking off; two experienced RAF pilots were killed, and two Bf 109s were claimed. The next day, warned that the Allied front in the north was collapsing, Pattle took the squadron south to Eleusis near Athens.

He was killed there on 20 April, shot down over Piraeus harbour by Messerschmitt Bf 110s while flying with a fever. His score is genuinely disputed: the provisional credit is 50 victories plus two shared, his biographer E.C.R. Baker established at least 40, and squadron members thought it closer to 60. On 19 April German mountain troops had already entered Larissa and taken the airfield, with the British supply dump left intact.

After the occupation and the Civil War, the base was rebuilt as a training and fighter station. In 1949 pilots of 335 and 336 Squadrons trained here on Curtiss Helldivers, and in 1951 the base took its present name, 110 Combat Wing. In October 1952, the year Greece joined NATO, 337 Squadron flew in from Elefsis with the Republic F-84G Thunderjet: the first Greek jet squadron.

More F-84Gs followed with 338 and 339 Squadrons in 1953. In the same year, according to the squadron’s official history, 337 formed the first Hellenic Air Force aerobatic flight. Wikipedia credits 337 with the “Hellenic Flame” team, but the air force dates the Hellenic Flame to August 1957 and to 341 Squadron’s F-86Es, calling it the second acroteam; this page follows the air force.

Through the Cold War Larissa hosted a procession of types. 342 Squadron flew F-84F Thunderstreaks from 1966 to 1983, 349 Squadron flew F-5A/Bs and RF-5As from 1967 to 1975 and returned from 1987 to 1997, and 347 Squadron formed on the A-7 Corsair II here in 1977–1979. In 1997 346 Squadron moved in with F-16C/D Block 30s; whether it remains at Larissa today is not confirmed by an official source.

For more than six decades Larissa was the home of Greek tactical reconnaissance. A photo-reconnaissance flight formed at Elefsis on 26 November 1953 and moved to Larissa on 5 July 1954. It became 348 Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, call sign “Eyes”, in 1955, flying the RT-33 and, from 1956, the RF-84F Thunderflash. The air force’s 110 Combat Wing page dates the move to 1954 and the renaming to 1955; its general history adds that the RF-84Fs strengthened the squadron from 1957, a one-year difference from the wing page.

The Thunderflash stayed a remarkably long time. Three Greek RF-84Fs retired in 1991 were, according to Wikipedia, the last operational F-84s anywhere, almost four decades after the first Greek F-84Gs. An F-84 with tactical number 37050 is listed as preserved at the base. The RF-4E Phantom joined the squadron in 1979; Greece had ordered six new-build RF-4Es alongside its 56 F-4Es, and they gave Larissa a reconnaissance jet with modern cameras and sensors for the first time since the Thunderflash arrived.

The fleet was then topped up with ex-Luftwaffe RF-4Es. The dates and numbers differ between sources: the air force’s history says more RF-4Es arrived in November 1992, its 110 Combat Wing page says 1993, and Wikipedia gives 20 aircraft in 1993–1994 on one page and 29 in 1993 on another. On 5 May 2017 a ceremony at Larissa retired the last RF-4Es and disbanded the squadron, which Aviation Week reported as the end of RF-4 operations in Europe.

337 Squadron, call sign GHOST, has had the longest relationship with the base. After the F-84 years it left Larissa, flew F-86D all-weather interceptors and then F-5s at Nea Anchialos, and returned as an all-weather squadron with the McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom II. It was re-established on 7 September 1978 at Andravida, redeployed to Larissa on 11 September, and began F-4E operations at a ceremony on 23 September 1978.

The Phantom era ended in the middle of the next decade. The air force decided on 31 December 2005 to withdraw 337’s F-4Es, and on 15 May 2006 its Supreme Council decided to re-establish the squadron with the Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 52+. The squadron emblem, a ghost carrying AIM-120 missiles, reflects its air-defence role. Wikipedia’s chronology of the squadron’s bases differs from the air force’s in places; where they disagree, this page follows haf.gr.

Greece is now upgrading its Block 52+ fleet to the F-16V standard: Hellenic Aerospace Industry reported the 42nd of 84 aircraft delivered on 23 September 2025. The air force has not published which of Larissa’s jets have been converted. Alongside the fighters, the Unmanned Aircraft Squadron, named Acheron in Wikipedia, flies the Greek-designed Pegasus II drone, transferred to the wing in 2017. The Pegasus was designed by the air force’s own research centre, KETA, and Hellenic Aerospace Industry, and first flew in 1982; Wikipedia says four remain in service at Larissa, but its production figures do not add up.

Larissa matters beyond its runway. The Hellenic Tactical Air Force, the command that controls all Greek combat units and national air defence, was founded in 1952 and moved to Larissa in 1953 as the 28th Tactical Air Force Headquarters; it took its present name in 1984. The air force’s own site simply says the command operates from Larissa city. In peacetime it prepares and trains the combat units under it; in war it administers and coordinates their operations with the other armed forces. Wikipedia also lists an Instrument Flight Training Center and a Meteorological Center at the base.

For years the headquarters also hosted NATO’s Combined Air Operations Centre 7 at nearby Koutsohero. CAOC 7 was closed in 2013 and its responsibilities passed to CAOC Torrejón in Spain; Wikipedia says an Air Operations Center at the base now reports into that NATO system. The base also housed Larissa’s civil airport until 1997, when it closed to civilian traffic. Wikipedia notes that the runways have no instrument landing system; no official runway data were retrieved for this page.

The United States has used the base too. In May 2018 the Pentagon confirmed, according to Defense News as cited by Wikipedia, that US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones were temporarily based at Larissa while their usual base in Africa was upgraded. The 2019 US–Greek defence agreement provides for more joint US, Greek and NATO activity at Larissa, Stefanovikio and Alexandroupoli. In January 2019 the US Assistant Secretary of State A. Wess Mitchell was reported to have discussed moving a significant share of US military assets to the base; no such move has been announced.