Melsbroek lies on the flat land north-east of Brussels, between Steenokkerzeel and Zaventem. The aerodrome was built by the German forces during the occupation of Belgium, and after the liberation of Brussels in September 1944 it was taken over by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force as Allied airfield B.58 Melsbroek. It became a crowded base, home to reconnaissance Wellingtons of No. 69 Squadron, Mosquitoes of No. 140 Squadron, Spitfires of No. 16 Squadron, B-25 Mitchells of No. 139 Wing and Harrow transports of No. 271 Squadron.

On the morning of 1 January 1945 the Luftwaffe tried to destroy Allied air power on the ground in Operation Bodenplatte. Melsbroek was one of the targets: 28 Bf 109s of Jagdgeschwader 27 and 15 Fw 190s of IV./JG 54 set out for it. The raid wrecked rows of parked aircraft, but it cost the attackers dearly, and JG 27 alone lost 17 fighters and 11 pilots killed. The published histories disagree on the exact tally on the ground; the figures are set out under incidents.

After the war Melsbroek replaced Haren as Belgium’s national airport and the base of Sabena. In April 1956 the government decided to build a new terminal on the Zaventem side of the same runways, ready for the 1958 World’s Fair; it opened on 5 July 1958. The old terminal and its buildings on the Melsbroek side passed to the air force, which still works from them, at the site the wing calls Kazerne Groenveld. The storage sheds the wing inherited date from about 1950, and by 2020 Defence itself called them unfit for the new fleet.

The 15th Air Transport Wing traces its existence to 1948 and celebrated its 75th anniversary with open days at Melsbroek on 27 and 28 May 2023. Its early fleet included Douglas C-54 Skymasters, flown from 1950 to 1971, but the aircraft that defined its first two decades was the Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar. Belgium received 22 new C-119Gs from 1953, rebuilt ten C-119Fs to G standard and bought six ex-USAF aircraft in 1960. The enthusiast reference Belgian Wings records the Boxcars at Koksijde at the end of their careers, when all were withdrawn by 1975 and scrapped there.

The Boxcars were the airlift of the Congo. When the colony’s independence in June 1960 collapsed into mutiny, Belgium intervened from 9 July 1960, and C-119s flew troops into the country. One, CP-36, crashed at Sake in the eastern Congo on 19 July 1960. The evacuation of Belgian civilians that followed was one of the largest airlifts of the period, much of it flown by Sabena; the share flown by the air force is not documented in the sources used here.

In November 1964 Belgium went back, to rescue hostages held by Simba rebels in Stanleyville. In Operation Dragon Rouge on 24 November about 320 Belgian paratroopers jumped from five American C-130s; about 1,600 foreigners and 150 Congolese were flown out, and two Belgian soldiers were killed. The lift was American because the Belgian Air Force had nothing that could carry paratroops across Africa. That lesson shaped what came next: in 1970 Belgium ordered the C-130H.

The first Belgian C-130H, CH-01, landed at Melsbroek on 25 June 1972 according to a 2021 anniversary article; the Belgian Wings serial list gives its delivery month as July 1972. Twelve were ordered, and the fleet was complete on 16 May 1973, flown by 20 Squadron. In 2009 a thirteenth, CH-13, a former US Air Force WC-130E hurricane hunter rebuilt by Sabena Technics, joined to make up for losses. Over nearly fifty years the fleet flew 285,000 hours, made 199,500 landings and carried 150,000 tonnes, according to the wing’s farewell figures.

The Hercules gave Belgium a reach it had not had in 1964. On 18 May 1978, when rebels seized Kolwezi in Zaire, the first C-130 left Melsbroek at 13:15 bound for Kamina via Kinshasa with the Paracommando Regiment, which was ordered to stay 72 hours and stayed over a month. The fleet went on to more than 50 peace and security operations, from African evacuations to the Balkans and Afghanistan, and from May 2018 a C-130 was permanently deployed to Mali in support of the United Nations.

The last big job came in August 2021. In Operation Red Kite the C-130s shuttled between Kabul and Islamabad as the Taliban took the Afghan capital: 400 people in the first three days, and more than 1,400 on more than 20 flights in all. The last Hercules were retired at a ceremony on 17 December 2021. CH-13 was flown to Beauvechain for preservation on 26 April 2021 after 25,740 hours; most of the survivors were sold to the Pakistan Air Force in 2022, and CH-12 left Melsbroek for Nur Khan on 29 July 2022.

Alongside the tactical airlift, 21 Squadron has long flown the government, the royal family and, at times, European officials: the so-called white fleet. Over the decades it has used two ex-Sabena Boeing 727-100s, two Airbus A310s retired in 2011, and, in the late 2010s according to the official unit page, an Airbus A321, two Dassault Falcon 20Es, one Falcon 900B and two Embraer ERJ 135s and two ERJ 145s. The Falcon 900B alone served 25 years.

Replacing them proved awkward. On 10 September 2019 the government approved a 12-year dry lease of two Dassault Falcon 7Xs from Abelag Aviation, worth a reported 124 million euro. A rival operator, Flying Group, complained to the Council of State that the award was flawed, and on 9 October 2019 the government withdrew it. The lease went ahead the following year: the first 7X, OO-LUM, started work at Melsbroek on 29 April 2020, the second, OO-FAE, arrived that August, and both went into service on 1 October 2020.

The Falcons replaced the four Embraers, whose sale was estimated at 15 million euro; the Falcon 20s and the Falcon 900B had already gone. The saga has not ended. In December 2025 the Council of State annulled a new tender that had again gone to Abelag, now part of Luxaviation, after appeals by competing companies. What that means for the Falcons at Melsbroek had not been announced in the sources read for this page.

Belgium signed for seven Airbus A400M Atlas transports on 27 May 2003, and waited seventeen years for them. Luxembourg bought one, and the two countries decided to fly all eight as a single pool in 20 Squadron at Melsbroek. The Luxembourg aircraft, CT-01, landed on runway 25R at about 11:00 on 9 October 2020; the first Belgian one, CT-02, followed on 22 December 2020. Deliveries ran through CT-03 in March 2021 to CT-07 in May 2022, and the last, CT-08, arrived on 12 January 2024.

The new aircraft needed a new home. Work on a 13,621 square metre maintenance hangar for three A400Ms began in March 2020, costing 49.6 million euro, and in November 2020 Defence launched a design, build and maintain contract to rebuild the rest of the military airport, from the apron to the passenger terminal. Luxembourg pays one eighth of the running costs. A BeLux national A400M training centre with a flight simulator opened at Melsbroek in May 2023.

The Atlas has already been busy. It flew Belgians out of Tel Aviv on 15 October 2023 when airlines stopped flying to Israel, dropped 6,000 kg of aid over Gaza in March 2024 and again in the Cerulean Skies 2.0 operation in the summer of 2025, and landed on a public road in Sweden during exercise Aurora 2026. In April 2026 one was hit by gunfire at Port-au-Prince while carrying Chadian soldiers for the United Nations mission in Haiti.

Melsbroek is an odd base. The national AIP lists it as a separate military aerodrome, EBMB, but its reference point, elevation and runways are those of Brussels Airport, EBBR. The wing’s aircraft taxi out among the airliners and take off from the same three runways: 01/19 of 2,987 metres, 07R/25L of 3,211 metres and 07L/25R of 3,638 metres. Brussels’ long disputes over night flights and flight paths, between the Flemish and Brussels regional governments and the communities under the routes, are therefore Melsbroek’s too.

The arrangement suits the job. Evacuees, repatriated citizens and the government land in the capital. When the Kabul airlift ended in August 2021, a chartered Air Belgium A340 with 193 passengers and a Belgian A330 MRTT with 33 landed at Melsbroek on the morning of 23 August, and on 15 October 2023 the A400M from Tel Aviv came home there with 105 people. The base also hosts the federal police air support directorate, DAFA, and its helicopters.

Sharing has its costs. On 5 May 2006 a fire in Sabena Technics’ Hangar 40 on the airport destroyed three civil Airbus A320s and the Belgian Hercules CH-02; its tail is kept at Melsbroek. And it is at Melsbroek that the air force’s transport world produced its first chief: Major General Bruno Beeckmans, a C-130 instructor who commanded the 15th Wing from 2022 to 2025, became the first head of the Belgian Air Force without a fighter career in May 2026.