The Royal Air Force opened Tengah in 1939 with a grass landing ground, part of the build-up of Singapore as Britain’s fortress in the East. Work on a 1,400-yard concrete runway began in 1941 and, according to the RAF’s own post-war history of its building programme cited by Wikipedia, was held up by unstable ground with trapped water lenses; it was completed only in January 1942. The station was laid out for two squadrons, with permanent accommodation, sick quarters and an operations block.

Tengah was among the targets of the first Japanese air raid on Singapore in the early hours of 8 December 1941. Wikipedia quotes the Hudson pilot Terence O’Brien, who arrived in late December 1941, on how quickly the peacetime station decayed, and records that only eight of the twenty aircrew who had flown out with him from Britain survived the campaign. In the Battle of Singapore, which began on 8 February 1942, Tengah, Singapore’s largest airfield at the time, lay in the Western Area defended by Australian troops and within range of Japanese artillery; it was the first airfield the Japanese captured. The last flyable RAF Hurricanes on the island were withdrawn to Sumatra on 9 February.

Under the occupation the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force took over Tengah, while the navy air service held Sembawang and Seletar, splitting the island’s airfields between the two services.

After 1945 Tengah became the RAF’s main operational station in the Far East. In the Malayan Emergency it housed RAF and Royal Australian Air Force Avro Lincolns and the Bristol Brigands of No. 84 Squadron bombing the Malayan National Liberation Army in the jungle; Hornets, Venoms and Canberras followed, among them No. 75 Squadron of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Wikipedia counts 22 RAF squadrons based here at one time or another.

The Indonesian Confrontation of 1963–1966 made it a front-line base. Hunters of 20 Squadron and Javelins of 60 and 64 Squadrons held the air defence of Singapore and the Malayan peninsula, and on 3 September 1964 an Indonesian Air Force C-130 crashed into the Strait of Malacca while trying to evade a Javelin FAW.9 of No. 60 Squadron. As a deterrent to President Sukarno, the RAF detached Victor B.1As of 15 Squadron from August 1963 and Vulcan B.2s of 12, 9 and 35 Squadrons in turn until 1966.

What the public did not know was revealed by British Ministry of Defence documents declassified in 2000 and reported by The Sunday Times: between 1962 and 1970 up to 48 Red Beard tactical nuclear weapons were kept in a secure store at Tengah for possible use by the V-bomber detachments and the Canberras of 45 Squadron under Britain’s SEATO commitments. The Javelins of 60 Squadron flew the last RAF operational sorties from Tengah on 30 April 1968, the day the squadron disbanded.

Britain’s decision in 1968 to withdraw from east of Suez gave Singapore three years to build an air force. The Singapore Air Defence Command was formed on 1 September 1968, and in October 1969 its first jets, 16 BAC Strikemasters, arrived at Tengah to form 130 Squadron and train the first fighter pilots. The RAF station closed at the end of March 1971; the airfield became RSAF Tengah and later Tengah Air Base, while British and Commonwealth forces stayed on under the Five Power Defence Arrangements, the RAAF until 1983.

The SADC’s fighter force grew around second-hand British and American aircraft: 46 refurbished Hawker Hunters delivered between 1971 and 1973, then A-4 Skyhawks rebuilt and re-engined in Singapore as the A-4SU. The display team that became the Black Knights was formed in 1973 on Hunters; Wikipedia names Tengah as its home and lists its later Hunter, F-5E, A-4SU and F-16 eras.

Today Tengah is the RSAF’s F-16 base. Wikipedia places 140, 143 and 145 Squadrons here, although its Changi article puts 145 Squadron at Changi; 111 Squadron flies the G550 airborne early warning aircraft that replaced the E-2C in 2012. The fleet has not been free of trouble: on 8 May 2024 an F-16 crashed inside the base on take-off after all four of its pitch rate gyroscopes failed at once, which MINDEF called the first such failure in 35 years of RSAF F-16 operations.

In 2017 the government announced that everything at Paya Lebar Air Base would move to Tengah and Changi so that Paya Lebar’s land and the height limits around it could be released for a new town. For Tengah that means a much bigger base. Wikipedia, citing The Straits Times and The Business Times, reports that about 50,000 graves in Choa Chu Kang Cemetery and 80 neighbouring farms and agricultural businesses were acquired, the Murai Urban Training Facility was closed, and a new runway is to be built on the extension.

One casualty was a piece of Cold War theatre. From April 1986 the RSAF ran Exercise Torrent, closing Lim Chu Kang Road beside the base and flying fighters off it to show that the air force could still generate sorties if its runways were cratered. The seventh and last edition was held from 10 to 13 November 2016, and the old road was closed for good on 8 June 2025 when a realigned Lim Chu Kang Road opened.

MINDEF has said the future fighter force will be F-35As, F-35Bs and F-15SGs, with the F-16 phased out from the mid-2030s. Wikipedia reports that Tengah will house the F-35As and F-35Bs by the 2030s; MINDEF has not published a basing decision for the type, and the first Singaporean F-35s are training in the United States.