The Royal Air Force built the airfield in 1944, during the Second World War, and called it RAF Negombo after the nearby fishing town. Wikipedia, citing Jefford’s standard history of RAF squadrons, lists No. 232 Squadron in 1945, No. 45 Squadron from 1946 to 1949 and No. 249 Squadron in 1950, with No. 1303 Flight in 1945–46.

The Royal Ceylon Air Force, founded on 2 March 1951, began here as a lodger. Its own history dates No. 1 Flight, the ancestor of the Flying Training Wing, to 1 September 1951 at “Royal Ceylon Air Force Base Katunayake”. When the government of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike removed the British from their Ceylon bases, the RCyAF took over the station in full; the sources differ on 1956 or 1957, and Air HQ Ceylon was disbanded on 1 November 1957.

Construction of an international airport on the same site began in 1964 with Canadian help and was finished in 1967. The civil airport took the Bandaranaike name in 1970, was renamed Katunayake International Airport in 1977 and took the Bandaranaike name back in 1995. The air force kept its side of the field, and Wikipedia notes that part of it “still remains a military airfield”.

For most of the 1970s and 1980s the air force’s few jets lived elsewhere. That changed on 1 February 1991, when No. 5 Squadron was reformed at Katunayake under Squadron Leader Harsha Abeywickrama with Chinese FT-5 trainers and F-7 fighters.

No. 10 Fighter Squadron followed in 1996 with Israeli Kfir C2s and a TC2 trainer. The Daily FT describes it as having become “the main strike–bomber formation” in the later stages of the war. In 2000 six MiG-27s and a MiG-23UB trainer, rebuilt in Ukraine, joined No. 5 Squadron; in November 2007 they became a squadron of their own, No. 12, which lasted until early 2019.

Katunayake was therefore where the bombing campaign of the last war was flown from, and the claims and counter-claims about its effects on civilians belong to the service page rather than the base. The base itself received the President’s Colours in March 2001, the air force’s 50th anniversary year.

According to the Sunday Times’ Situation Report, the attackers gathered at a playground outside the base after 9 p.m. on 23 July, cut through the perimeter wire at a lonely spot of the 700-acre complex at about 1.15 a.m., and later cut a chain-link fence between the jet and helicopter squadrons, getting in through a storm-water drain. They opened fire at 3.50 a.m.

Wikipedia, drawing on the Sunday Times, Jane’s and Frontline, lists eight military aircraft destroyed: two Kfirs, a MiG-27, three K-8 trainers, a Mi-17 and a Mi-24; five K-8s, a MiG-27 and several helicopters were damaged. The attackers then crossed to the civil side, destroying two Airbus A330s and an A340 of SriLankan Airlines and damaging three more airliners. Counts differ: TamilNet reported 13 aircraft destroyed that morning.

All 14 attackers were killed, by Wikipedia’s account; seven government personnel died, though first reports gave four. The airport closed for 14 hours, and Wikipedia attributes to the attack a 15.5 per cent fall in tourism and Sri Lanka’s first annual economic contraction since 1948. The air force commander, Air Marshal Jayalath Weerakkody, was quoted by the Sunday Times saying that the air force took full responsibility for the incidents.

At 00:45 on Monday 26 March 2007 the LTTE flew its first air raid. The air force identified the aircraft as a Czech-built Zlin Z-143 four-seater; the Sunday Times reported four bombs dropped, one of which failed to explode. They hit the zinc-roofed building of the Aeronautical Engineering Wing and killed three airmen of the air-sea rescue team sleeping nearby; 16 were injured and about five helicopters of the adjoining No. 4 Squadron were lightly damaged.

The response exposed the gaps. A K-8 with night-flying capability was scrambled more than 20 minutes after the attack and lost the raiders over Mannar, and the paper reported that the Indian-built air defence radar had not been switched on. Six F-7G interceptors bought from China arrived in 2008, the service dataset records, specifically to deal with the LTTE’s light aircraft.

The last Air Tigers came on the night of 20 February 2009, two Zlins each carrying 215 kg of C-4 according to the military spokesman quoted by the Sunday Times. With Colombo’s power cut and the guns firing, one was brought down at Katunayake at about 10.45 p.m.; the other crashed into the Inland Revenue Department building in Colombo. The paper counted two dead, a pilot and a 14-year-old boy hit by stray fire, and 58 injured.

By the end of the war only a few Kfirs were serviceable, and the economic crisis of 2022 left the fleet short of money for years. In 2021 the government approved a US$49 million overhaul by Israel Aerospace Industries of four single-seat Kfirs and a trainer, with a glass cockpit and new avionics; Air Marshal Sudarshana Pathirana told the Daily FT the aim was to move them from analogue to modern digital systems.

On 11 June 2026 the first aircraft rebuilt to Kfir C12 standard flew at Katunayake, watched by the commander, Air Marshal Bandu Edirisinghe, and the Secretary of Defence. The air force called the Kfir, in service since 1996, its ‘Lion Cub’.