The SAAF counts its birthday from 1 February 1920, but it needed somewhere to fly. Britain’s Imperial Gift supplied 100 aircraft — 30 Avro 504Ks, 22 SE.5as and 48 DH.9s — with spares, tools and hangars; the first batch arrived in September 1919, and on 1 January 1920 an Aircraft Depot was set up at Roberts Heights near Pretoria under Captain I. Welch.

In April 1921 the government acquired the neighbouring farm Zwartkop, which thus became South Africa’s first air force base, as the unofficial SAAF history puts it. No 1 Flight was established there on 26 April 1921 and joined by a second flight. The Imperial Gift hangars survive, now used by the SAAF Museum as exhibition halls.

Swartkop’s motto is Primus, “first”. It kept its Dutch spelling, Zwartkop, until 1 April 1949. During the Second World War, Wikipedia records, 26 Squadron was formed here on 24 August 1942. In July 1951 1 Squadron’s new Vampires came over from Waterkloof, whose grass field could not take jets.

On 1 February 1968 the station became Air Force Base Swartkop, and 21 Squadron, the VIP unit, was reformed here that year, per Wikipedia. After 1994, with a much smaller air force and Waterkloof a few minutes away, the SAAF decided to vacate it; in 1999 it was redesignated an air force station. The planned closure never fully happened. defenceWeb reported that the field was reopened temporarily when Waterkloof’s runway had to be rebuilt, and that in 2010 the air force decided to reopen it fully.

In May 2023 Brigadier General Jacobus Crous, the officer commanding, told defenceWeb that AFB Swartkop had ceased to exist and was now the Air Force Mobile Deployment Wing, a change he described as being about command more than substance: the wing deploys the air force’s mobile equipment, including radars and communications. The unofficial SAAF website dates the MDW name to the 1999 downgrade instead; the sources disagree on when the title was adopted.

Crous also repeated two claims often made for the field: that it is the oldest operational air base in the world, and that its land was donated by the Queen of England. Neither could be verified from an independent source; they are reported as his words.

By 2026 the MDW had three parts: MDW Central at Swartkop, MDW East at Snake Valley and MDW West at the former SAAF Gymnasium in Valhalla. defenceWeb reported in April 2026 that MDW Central depended entirely on 11 mobile generators after two Eskom substations were vandalised, burning 12,000 to 16,900 litres of diesel a month; Defence Minister Angie Motshekga said security there was “not adequate”.

The South African Air Force Museum was founded on 26 October 1973 and has its headquarters at Swartkop, with branches at AFB Ysterplaat in Cape Town and at Chief Dawid Stuurman International Airport in Gqeberha. Its collection includes Mirages, Cheetahs, a Buccaneer with its weapons load and Blue Parrot radar, Shackletons and the Dakota that flew a coelacanth expedition in 1952, according to Wikipedia.

The unofficial SAAF website’s list of aircraft at Swartkop reads like a history of the service: a Spitfire Mk IXe and a P-51D Mustang from the Second World War and Korea, a Canadair Sabre Mk 6, Mirage IIIBZ and IIICZ, a Shackleton MR.3, a Fieseler Storch, a DH.87B Hornet Moth, Chipmunks, Harvards, a Provost and a Prentice, an S-55 and Alouette II helicopters, alongside the working A109s and Oryx of 17 Squadron. Which of the historic machines are airworthy is not stated there.

The museum’s air show is the field’s big public day. On 6 June 2026 defenceWeb listed Hawks, the Flying Lions Harvards, a museum formation, Oryx and Huey helicopters, an Alouette III formation, a four-ship of Chipmunks, an A109 and a C-212 parachute drop, under the theme “The Eagles Path”. Adult tickets were R160.