Before San Isidro, Dominican military aircraft flew from General Andrews airfield in Santo Domingo, opened on 22 January 1944, according to the Spanish Wikipedia. The air arm then grew far beyond what that city field could hold. After the 1947 Rio Treaty the United States supplied 25 P-47D Thunderbolts and 30 AT-6 trainers, and in 1952 Sweden sold 25 Vampire jets and a large batch of P-51D Mustangs. By the mid-1950s Wikipedia counts some 240 aircraft.

The new base opened on 23 March 1953 and carried the name Base Aérea Presidente Trujillo. Its runway, 2,134 metres of asphalt aligned 03/21, is long enough for the jets of the day and still the air force’s main strip. The Spanish Wikipedia records that the largest squadron was named after Trujillo’s son Ramfis. The name of the base went with the dictator: after Trujillo was killed on 30 May 1961, it became San Isidro.

Britannica describes how Trujillo, an army officer who seized power in a military revolt in 1930, kept it for 31 years through his command of the armed forces, family appointments and the murder of opponents. A base built to his name and filled with fighters bought abroad was as much a pillar of that rule as a defence against the exile invasions he feared.

When reformist officers and civilians seized the National Palace on 24 April 1965 to restore the deposed president Juan Bosch, the conservative military answered from San Isidro. The Library of Congress country study says General Elías Wessín y Wessín’s Loyalists struck back on 25 April with tank assaults and bombing runs, yet the Constitutionalists held the capital.

English Wikipedia describes four Loyalist P-51 Mustangs bombing the National Palace and other positions, and on 26 April two P-51s and two Vampires strafing Santo Domingo with machine guns and 20 mm cannon, dropping 500 lb bombs and firing HVAR rockets. One Mustang was brought down by a ground machine gun, which Wikipedia calls the last Mustang ever downed in battle.

The United States intervened on 28 April. Wikipedia says the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division landed at San Isidro Air Base from 30 April, and the Library of Congress says US forces eventually totalled 20,000. Washington stated that the Constitutionalists were dominated by communists; the Constitutionalists held that they were restoring an elected government. The base was the bridgehead of an intervention that ended with a provisional government on 3 September 1965.

After 1965 the air force shrank. The Vampires were retired in 1974 and the Mustangs only in 1984, making San Isidro the last home of military P-51s; nine of the final ten went to American collectors in 1988, according to Wikipedia. Eight A-37B Dragonflies arrived in 1984 to chase drug flights and left in 2001.

On 22 September 1998 Hurricane Georges devastated the base, English Wikipedia says. The rebuilding brought ENAER T-35B Pillán trainers from November 1999 and then the Super Tucanos: the first two A-29Bs were delivered in December 2009 and all eight had been received by October 2010. The Spanish Wikipedia says the combat squadron, the Dragones, was reactivated in 2010.

The base is the air force’s headquarters and its public face. On 20 February 2024 the US chargé d’affaires handed over a Cessna surveillance aircraft worth more than US$8 million here, according to US Southern Command. Infodefensa reports that four Leonardo AW169 helicopters arrived from March 2024 and that one was damaged near the base on 22 April 2026, without injuries. On 28 February 2026 the air force opened a new command and control centre for its Intelligence Directorate at San Isidro.

Every February the base hosts the air force anniversary. Zona Militar reports that the 77th, held from 10 to 15 February 2025, drew more than 100,000 spectators to a parachuting festival with jumpers from more than a dozen countries. No foreign aircraft are permanently based at San Isidro on the sources checked.