In 1944 the United States persuaded Stalin to lend it three airfields in Soviet Ukraine for shuttle bombing: heavy bombers from England and Italy would hit targets deep in Axis Europe, land in Ukraine, refuel and rearm, and bomb again on the way home. Poltava became USAAF Station 559 and the headquarters of Eastern Command; Myrhorod became Station 561, a second heavy-bomber field; Pyriatyn, Station 560, took the escort fighters.

Myrhorod was made ready in May 1944 and received its first bombers with the first Frantic mission on 2 June 1944, when Fifteenth Air Force bombers attacked Debrecen in Hungary on their way east. English Wikipedia counts about 75 bombers of the 13th Combat Wing at Myrhorod when the Eighth Air Force came through later that month, and seven shuttle missions in all between June and September 1944.

The operation’s worst night came on 21–22 June 1944, when the Luftwaffe followed the B-17s home and struck Poltava, destroying 43 to 47 of its Flying Fortresses — the Wikipedia articles give both figures. The German bombers missed Myrhorod that night, and came back the next. By then the Americans had evacuated every flyable aircraft, and the raid on Myrhorod destroyed mainly fuel and ammunition. Operations continued on a smaller scale and ended in September 1944.

The brigade that made Myrhorod famous is older than the jet airfield. It was formed on 27 November 1941 as the 659th Fighter Aviation Regiment at Krasnovodsk in Turkmenistan, went to war in January 1942, earned the honorary title "Galatsky" on 29 December 1944 and ended the war at Münchendorf airfield in Austria.

It came to Ukraine in October 1947, to Boryspil near Kyiv, and was renumbered the 831st Fighter Aviation Regiment on 20 February 1949. It flew the MiG-15, then the MiG-17 from 1951 and MiG-21 variants from 1966. In 1977 it moved to Myrhorod, whose rebuilt runway was long enough for the new generation of fighters, and on 10 November 1985 it received its first six Su-27s. By 27 October 1986 the whole regiment had converted to the Flanker.

On 13 January 1992 the regiment took the oath of loyalty to the Ukrainian people. It became the 831st Fighter Aviation Brigade on 1 August 2003 and took its current name, the 831st Tactical Aviation Brigade, in October 2007. The first modernised Su-27S1Ms and two upgraded L-39M1 trainers were handed over on 1 December 2018.

In the 1990s the brigade became one of Ukraine’s links to Western air forces. F-15E Strike Eagles of the US Air Force’s 4th Fighter Wing visited Myrhorod in 1997, and in June 1998 Col. Ivan Chernenko flew a Su-27UB to the wing’s home, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. In 2004 Lt Col Fedir Tyshchuk’s Su-27 display was judged the best at the Slovak International Air Fest, per English Wikipedia.

The most celebrated of the brigade’s display pilots was Oleksandr Oksanchenko, call sign "Grey Wolf", who flew the Su-27 solo display from 2013 to 2018. English Wikipedia lists appearances at the Malta International Airshow and the Slovak International Air Fest in 2016, the "As the Crow Flies" award at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2017 and the best-pilot award at the Czech International Air Fest in 2018. He was named Myrhorod’s person of the year in 2016 and retired as a colonel in 2018.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, Oksanchenko went back to the brigade. On 25 February he was killed in air combat over Kyiv. English Wikipedia says he was shot down by a Russian S-400 missile, a detail that could not be independently corroborated; President Zelensky awarded him the title Hero of Ukraine posthumously on 1 March 2022.

He was not the brigade’s only loss. English Wikipedia’s list of the 831st’s pilots killed since February 2022 runs to more than half a dozen names, from Maj. Stepan Chobanu on 28 February 2022 to Lt Col Denys Vasyliuk in May 2024 and Capt. Ivan Bolotov in February 2025; those dates come from Ukrainian announcements summarised by Wikipedia and are given here only as reported.

English Wikipedia records Russian strikes on Myrhorod itself in April 2022, June 2023 and July 2024. Claims of aircraft destroyed there are one side’s figures, have not been confirmed by Ukraine, and are not repeated here; neither are the brigade’s wartime dispositions.