The 4th Wing’s history, as the Air Force Command Headquarters tells it, is a map of China at war. The 4th Group was formed at Hangzhou on 16 October 1936 and moved to Wuhan that December. After the Japanese advance it went north-west to Lanzhou, where it flew Soviet-supplied I-15s and I-16s and defended north-west China in 1941; in 1942 and 1944 its crews went to India to collect American P-40s and P-43s.

In December 1948 the group was ordered to Chiayi, and from there it supported the retreating Nationalist forces at Dinghai, Hengyang and Hainan Island. It was formally organised as the 4th Wing on 14 January 1953. The wing credits Captain Ouyang Yi-feng with shooting down two MiG-17s while flying an F-84G on 21 July 1956; that is the wing’s claim, and a PRC account was not found.

In the 1950s Chiayi was also an American base. English Wikipedia, citing the Taipei Air Station history site, lists the 67th Fighter-Bomber Squadron at Chiayi from 27 January to 17 February and again from 1 July to 1 October 1955, the 310th Fighter-Bomber Squadron from Osan in March 1955, and the Kentucky Air National Guard from 19 February to 1 March 1958. Squadrons of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing and the 18th Tactical Fighter Wing on Okinawa rotated through every 60 to 90 days between 1955 and 1968.

Those rotations ended long before the US recognised the People’s Republic of China in 1979. Chiayi’s civil role began on 19 May 1976, when a departure lounge on the air base opened Chiayi Airport, which still shares the field.

Taiwan bought 150 F-16A/Bs in 1992, and on 4 October 1997 the 4th Wing began flying them with its 21st, 22nd and 23rd Squadrons; on 1 November 2004 the old 4th and 14th Groups were merged into combat squadrons. Under the Phoenix Rising programme, costed at NT$110 billion, the F-16A/Bs were rebuilt to F-16V standard with new radar and computers.

On 18 November 2021 President Tsai Ing-wen commissioned the first F-16V combat wing at Chiayi, with 64 jets converted. She told the crews that “regardless of any intrusion, you can immediately take off to intercept and drive them away.” The upgrade was completed in 2023, and Chiayi and Hualien now share the F-16V fleet.

The work goes on in public view. In August 2024 the base held an open house with F-16Vs, Mirages, Black Hawks, a C-130 and a Patriot battery on show, and on 28 January 2026 the 4th Wing practised rapid turnarounds for two F-16Vs with the 795th Air Defense and Artillery Brigade, rearming them with AIM-120 and AIM-9M missiles and Sniper pods.

Chiayi’s worst day of the F-16V era came on 11 January 2022, when a 4th Wing F-16V went into the sea west of Chiayi County and Captain Chen Yi was killed, less than two months after the wing had been commissioned with the new standard. The air force grounded its whole F-16 fleet; a contractor dredged the seabed around the clock for the cockpit and flight recorder, which was recovered and analysed. On 20 January 2022 four F-16Vs took off from Chiayi as flying resumed, although the cause had not yet been found.

The base also hosts the air force’s rescuers. English Wikipedia places the Air Rescue Group here with S-70C, UH-60M and EC225 helicopters, the types the air force uses for mountain, sea and night rescue. Smaller mishaps are part of the record too: on 23 September 2021 an F-16V’s landing gear retracted during a pre-flight check at Chiayi because a safety latch had been removed, which the air force blamed on ground-crew carelessness.