Skaraborg Wing began life on paper as the Värmland Wing. The 1936 defence decision expanded the Air Force from four air corps to seven wings, and the government first proposed putting the new bomber wing at Karlstad. By 1938 the Air Force leadership had changed its mind: according to the wing’s history, the electrification of the Värmland railway caused radio interference and civilian building near the proposed airfield left no room to grow. Sites on the Närke plain south of Örebro and on the Västgöta plain were examined instead.

Såtenäs, on the shore of Lake Vänern between Lidköping and Trollhättan, won because of its peacetime flying conditions and its closeness to bombing and firing ranges. A local legend credits King Gustaf V with pointing it out from the air; it is told as legend, not record. Parliament approved the move on 8 June 1938 and the state bought the Såtenäs estate for 685,000 kronor on 22 September 1938. The wing was briefly called the Göta Wing and took the name Skaraborg in February 1940, when a separate wing was authorised for Gothenburg.

The wing was inaugurated on 1 July 1940 under Major Folke Ramström, with two light-bomber squadrons, Gustav Red and Gustav Blue. Its first aircraft were Caproni Ca.313 bombers bought from Italy as the B 16, wooden-framed machines that coped badly with the Nordic climate and earned the nickname “flying coffins”. Swedish-built Saab B 17s replaced them from 1941 and served through the war. Prince Gustaf Adolf presented the wing’s colour at Såtenäs in 1943. The wing’s motto is “Vilja, kunnande, ära” (will, knowledge, honour).

After the war F 7 moved from bombing to attack. It flew the B 18 and then, from 1951, the A 21R, one of Sweden’s first jet aircraft; the A 29B Tunnan followed in 1954 and the A 32A Lansen in 1956. The Lansen years made Såtenäs one of the core units of the Air Force’s anti-shipping and ground-attack force. The wing trained against the Hattefuran target range, a small island in Lake Vänern that recurs in the wing’s history and in its accident reports.

In July 1971 the first production AJ 37 Viggen was delivered to the Air Force, and F 7 became the first wing to receive both the single-seat AJ 37 attack version and the two-seat SK 37 trainer. The Viggen years brought losses too: the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority (SHK) records an AJ 37 from F 7 destroyed on the ice of Vänern in 1986 after an engine failure, and another that crashed near Järpås in 1990, killing its pilot.

Sources disagree on when the Viggen left. The English Wikipedia article on the wing gives AJ 37s from 1973 to 1993, the Viggen article lists three AJ 37 squadrons at F 7 from 1972 to 1998, and the wing’s Swedish history has the last squadron converting to the Gripen in 1998. The honest range for the end of Viggen flying at Såtenäs is therefore 1993–1998, with one squadron leaving the type in 1993 and the second in 1997–1998.

In December 1987 the Air Force commander chose F 7 to lead the Gripen’s introduction, and from February 1988 flight and simulator training for all Gripen pilots was concentrated there. The first production JAS 39A, 39102, was delivered to F 7 on 8 June 1993. Two months later, on loan back to the test organisation, it crashed during the Stockholm Water Festival display, a setback the programme survived. Gripencentrum, built between 1990 and 1996 beside the western apron, was inaugurated by King Carl XVI Gustaf on 9 June 1996.

Gustav Blue became Sweden’s first operational, war-assigned Gripen squadron in autumn 1997, and Gustav Red converted in 1998. Conversion to the C/D version began in 2010, and on 13 December 2012 the wing flew its last A/B sorties with a Christmas-tree formation over Västergötland. In May 2010 the JAS 39A 39131 reached 2,000 flying hours in 2,726 sorties, then a record for the type. Foreign students have flown at Såtenäs under the call sign “Oscar” since 2003–2004.

Today the Swedish Armed Forces describe F 7 as responsible for training all Swedish Gripen pilots and those of purchasing nations, and since 2016 the wing has again been a war unit for both Gripen and transport and special flying. The first Gripen E was handed to the Air Force on 20 October 2025 and went to F 7, the natural home for the type’s conversion training. The squadrons are now numbered: the 71st and 72nd Fighter Squadrons, formerly Gustav Red and Gustav Blue; the SHK report on a 2022 incident names the 71st as an F 7 fighter squadron.

On 1 March 1965 the first Lockheed C-130 Hercules, designated TP 84, landed at Såtenäs, making F 7 the first unit in Europe to operate the type. It was leased at first and bought six months later. A second aircraft followed in 1969, a third in 1975 and five more in 1981–1982, giving a fleet of eight. They have flown with the 73rd Transport Squadron, call sign “Mighty”, on relief, evacuation and military missions far beyond Sweden. The first aircraft, 84001, was withdrawn from use on 9 June 2014.

The Swedish Armed Forces call F 7 the hub of Sweden’s military transport flying. All Hercules are stationed at Såtenäs, and the wing coordinates Swedish military transport operations. It also manages Sweden’s share of the Strategic Airlift Capability, begun in 2009, in which 12 nations share three Boeing C-17 Globemaster IIIs of the Heavy Airlift Wing at Pápa in Hungary; the official page gives 26 Swedish personnel posted there with their families.

The wing’s responsibilities reach further than its own runways. The official page lists the S 100D airborne surveillance aircraft, the TP 100 and TP 102 VIP transports and the S 102B signals-intelligence aircraft under F 7, with personnel at Linköping, Bromma and Arlanda. Those aircraft are not flown from Såtenäs itself, and the base’s summary row does not yet list them.

On 29 March 2011 the government of Fredrik Reinfeldt asked the Riksdag to approve Sweden’s part in the UN-mandated operation over Libya. Bill 2010/11:111 offered at most eight JAS 39 Gripens, one TP 84 with air-to-air refuelling capability, and reconnaissance and support resources, about 130 personnel in all. Because every TP 84 is stationed at Såtenäs, the tanker came from F 7. The Gripens were not permitted to attack ground targets; they enforced the no-fly zone and flew reconnaissance. By October 2011 they had flown more than 650 missions, according to the English Wikipedia Gripen article, which an official tally in the sources checked did not confirm.

Iceland marked a newer chapter. Sweden joined NATO on 7 March 2024, and in early February 2026 a Swedish detachment of six Gripens and about 110 personnel began Sweden’s first air policing mission over Iceland, running to mid-March. Iceland Review reported it as the first time Sweden had flown an air policing patrol there; the Wikipedia table of rotations attributes the detachment to F 7, which the Swedish Air Force dataset on this site also records. Swedish fighters had trained in Iceland before membership.

The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority lists 19 investigations in a search for Såtenäs; at least six of them name F 7 or the base, from 1986 to 2022. Read together, the reports show the hazards of each era. The Viggen years brought an engine failure over Vänern’s ice in 1986 and a fatal crash on a radar navigation exercise in 1990. The same year a TP 101 Beech 200 from F 7 flew into fog-covered trees on an ILS approach to Halmstad, killing both pilots; the SHK found the aircraft had left the localiser, probably because an instrument on the left side was set wrongly.

The Gripen era’s reports are about how the aircraft and its pilots behave at the edge of the envelope. The 1993 Stockholm crash was traced to an unexpected pitch movement during a roll command and gaps in validating the flight-control laws; the 1999 loss over Vänern to a Gripen flying into its target’s wake vortices during close air combat training. Later investigations dealt with an oxygen system failure in 2020 and a near-collision during air combat training in 2022, where the SHK recommended better transfer of information about pilots’ qualifications between units and training levels. In none of these investigated Gripen events was a pilot killed.