The RAF in Egypt needed aircraft in 1940, and the answer was an old airline route. Imperial Airways had flown between Lagos and Khartoum before the war, and the RAF chose Takoradi, a port on the Gold Coast, as the point where crated aircraft could be landed, assembled and flown east. The official history records that an advance party of twenty-four officers and men under Group Captain H. K. Thorold arrived on 14 July 1940.

The first aircraft came by sea: six Blenheim IVs and six Hurricanes in crates on 5 September, and thirty Hurricanes on the carrier Argus the next day. On 19 September the first convoy — one Blenheim leading six Hurricanes — stood ready, and on 26 September one Blenheim and five Hurricanes reached Abu Sueir in Egypt. The route ran 378 miles to Lagos, then via Kano, Maiduguri, El Geneina, El Fasher and Khartoum, and about a thousand miles down the Nile.

The US Army Air Forces history describes the result as "a large base and an assembly plant" where aircraft were "assembled, tested, and then ferried across Africa to Cairo". Wikipedia adds that Spitfires came the same way and that No. 26 Squadron of the South African Air Force flew Wellingtons from Takoradi on anti-submarine and convoy patrols. A total for the aircraft that passed through Takoradi was not found in the sources reached, so none is given here.

After independence the British handed the airfield to the new air force. Wikipedia records that RAF Station Takoradi became Ghana Air Force Station Sekondi-Takoradi on 1 March 1961, and that the de Havilland Chipmunk basic trainer was the first aircraft flown there. The station became the home of flying training, and the service’s best-known officer passed through it: Jerry Rawlings was posted to Takoradi in March 1968 and was commissioned as a pilot officer in January 1969, winning the Speed Bird Trophy as best cadet, according to Wikipedia.

The base was rebuilt during the re-equipment of the early 2010s. On 19 October 2012 President John Mahama commissioned three Diamond DA42s — two for surveillance and one trainer — and two new hangars named after Air Vice Marshals Achilles Harry Kwame Dumashie and Richard Yawovi Ashley-Lassen, built by China’s Poly Group, at Takoradi Air Force Base, defenceWeb reported. Wikipedia lists DA42s with the flying training school and Z-9 helicopters with a squadron at Takoradi today.

Takoradi is the seat of Air Force Training Command (AFTRAC). On 25 September 2026 its commander, Air Commodore Richard Danso, reviewed the passing-out of 293 recruits from the Air Force Recruit Training School after 26 weeks of basic training, with the base commander, Group Captain Kwabena Krampah Antwi, in attendance, MyJoyOnline reported.

Command of the base itself was briefly vacant. When Air Commodore Kwabena Kissiedu Manukule Atiemo took over on 28 August 2024, the base had been without a commander for nine months after the death of Air Commodore Godfried Sackey Parker; the Flying Group commander had acted in between. In February 2025 Atiemo warned that about 88 of the base’s more than 600 acres had been encroached on, and the Western Regional Minister, Joseph Nelson, called for swift action to secure military land.

On 6 August 2025 a Ghana Air Force Z-9 flying from Accra to Obuasi crashed in the Ashanti Region, killing all eight on board, among them the defence minister Edward Omane Boamah and the environment minister Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed. Its crew — Squadron Leader Peter Bafemi Anala, the pilot, Flying Officer Manaen Twum-Ampadu, the co-pilot, and Sergeant Ernest Addo Mensah, the flight technician — were all posted at Takoradi. The co-pilot’s name is spelled several ways in the press; the spelling here follows the MyJoyOnline vigil report.

On 8 August service personnel, families and members of the public held a candlelight vigil at the base. "The whole country is grieving, but particularly the Western Region," the regional minister, Joseph Nelson, said.