Mafraq sits on the old route north from Amman to Syria, and that is why the British wanted it. English Wikipedia, drawing on C. G. Jefford’s standard reference RAF Squadrons, records that in the 1920s the RAF kept armoured cars there, and that No. 14 Squadron flew Bristol F.2 Fighters from the field as a detachment between February 1920 and June 1924. In Transjordan, as in Iraq, the RAF was the main instrument of British control, and air power was cheaper than garrisons.

The airfield grew in the jet age. In 1951 it was rebuilt with new buildings and a concrete runway; that April No. 249 Squadron brought its Vampire FB.5s. A detachment of No. 6 Squadron flew Venoms here from October 1954 to September 1955, and No. 32 Squadron’s Venom FB.1s were at Mafraq from October 1956 to January 1957, the months of the Suez crisis. Jordan’s politics then overtook the RAF. King Hussein had dismissed Glubb Pasha on 1 March 1956, and on 31 May 1957 RAF Mafraq was evacuated and handed to the Jordanian government.

In June 1959 the station was renamed King Hussein Air Base, after the king who was himself a pilot. Flying training began in 1960 with No. 4 Squadron on Chipmunks, and English Wikipedia lists Hunter and Vampire squadrons here in the early years. Mafraq was where Jordan’s fighters were, and so it was where the confrontation with Israel was felt first.

On 13 November 1966 Israel sent a large ground force with tanks into the West Bank village of Samu, then under Jordanian control. English Wikipedia’s account of the raid says that eight Jordanian Hunters were scrambled at Mafraq and met four Israeli Mirage IIIs; one Hunter was shot down and its pilot killed, and an Israeli aircraft was damaged and forced to land. The pilot was Lieutenant Muwaffaq Salti, whose name the air force later gave to its new base at Azraq. On 25 November the UN Security Council condemned Israel for the raid in Resolution 228.

Seven months later the base was a target. On 5 June 1967, after Jordanian Hunters had struck Netanya, the Israeli Air Force attacked Jordan’s air bases in two waves: the first cratered the runways and knocked out the control towers, the second destroyed, by the Israeli account, all 21 of Jordan’s Hunters, six transport aircraft and two helicopters. English Wikipedia’s article on the base says that one of Mafraq’s hangars, some aircraft and a runway were destroyed. The figures are Israel’s; no Jordanian count for Mafraq alone was found.

Without aircraft after 1967, the air force rebuilt slowly, and Mafraq became its school. According to English Wikipedia, full pilot training in Jordan started at the base in 1974 and the first course graduated in 1975; until then Jordanian pilots had been trained largely abroad. In 1978 the base took the name King Hussein Air College. A staff school followed in 1979, and an Air Command and Staff College was formed in 1990 and later disbanded.

The college’s best-known graduate is Muath al-Kasasbeh. English Wikipedia says he graduated from the King Hussein Air College in 2009, qualified on the F-16 and by 2012 was flying from Muwaffaq Salti Air Base; he was captured when his aircraft came down near Raqqa on 24 December 2014 and was killed by the Islamic State. The college has changed with the air force: the first class of female cadets graduated in 2020, and in November 2022, Breaking Defense reported, the air force signed for ten Bell 505 training helicopters for the college, to replace its Robinson R44s and support a three-year programme in aviation science, navigation and air traffic control.

What flies at Mafraq today is not published by the air force in a form that could be checked for this page. Wikipedia’s RJAF article, citing the air force website, places training squadrons and the Flight Instructor School here, and the air force’s Pilatus PC-21 and Grob G 120TP trainers are the obvious candidates; their base is not confirmed here.