Chitose’s aviation history begins with a single flight in 1926, sponsored by a Hokkaido newspaper, according to English Wikipedia. The Imperial Japanese Navy took the field over in 1939 and used it through the Pacific war. American forces occupied it in 1945; the 3rd Air Commando Group flew from here in the winter of 1945–1946 and the 49th Fighter Group from February 1946 to April 1948.

The Korean War and the Cold War made Chitose a front-line base. The 6163rd Air Base Wing was activated in 1951, the year Japan Airlines began scheduled flights to the field, and in September 1954 the USAF’s 4th Fighter Group arrived with F-86 Sabres. It was inactivated on 1 July 1957, and the base returned to Japanese control on 31 December 1957.

The JASDF’s official history records that the 2nd Air Wing began alert duty with the F-86F on 28 April 1958, and that the service flew its first scramble that year. Chitose remained a joint civil-military field until 1988, when airline traffic moved to New Chitose Airport alongside.

The 2nd Air Wing was the first to take the F-104J. The 201st Squadron formed at Chitose in March 1963 and the 203rd on 25 June 1964, the latter taking over the alert from the F-86D Sabres of the 103rd Squadron. On 1 October 1974 the 201st disbanded and the F-4EJs of the new 302nd Squadron took its place.

The F-15 era began on 24 March 1984, when the 203rd converted to the Mitsubishi-built Eagle; the 302nd moved to Naha in November 1985, and on 19 March 1986 the 201st was re-formed on the F-15. Its brown bear emblem comes from the bears of Hokkaido. The two squadrons have flown the F-15 from Chitose ever since, and both appeared in the 1990 film Best Guy, according to English Wikipedia.

The pattern of their work has changed. The Joint Staff counted 165 scrambles by the Northern Air Defense Force in FY2025, about 28 per cent of the national total, and only 20 in April–June 2026, against 106 in the south-west.

On 6 September 1976 Lieutenant Viktor Belenko of the Soviet Air Defence Forces took off from Chuguyevka in Primorsky Krai in a MiG-25 and flew to Hakodate in southern Hokkaido. According to the service dataset’s reading of Japanese Wikipedia, JASDF ground radar lost him as he descended to very low level, and two F-4EJs of the 302nd Squadron, scrambled from Chitose at about 13:20, could not pick him out of the ground clutter. He landed at about 13:50.

The MiG-25 was moved by a US Air Force C-5 Galaxy from Hakodate to Hyakuri on 25 September, examined, and shipped back from the port of Hitachi in 30 crates on 15 November 1976, according to English Wikipedia. Belenko went to the United States.

For Chitose the lesson was the gap in low-level radar cover, which the Phantoms’ own radar could not close. The JASDF answered by buying E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, which entered service at Misawa in January 1987, according to Wikipedia.

Chitose is also the home of the government aircraft. The Special Airlift Group, made up of a headquarters, the 701st Squadron and a maintenance squadron, carries the prime minister, the imperial family and state guests; JASDF personnel fly and crew the aircraft.

Its first two Boeing 747-400s were delivered in the autumn of 1991 and first carried a prime minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, to the United States in 1993, according to English Wikipedia. They were replaced by two Boeing 777-300ERs, which arrived at Chitose on 17 August and 11 December 2018 and entered service in April 2019. The group reported its 400th mission flight on 9 August 2024.