The Finnish Air Force was only eleven years old when it moved its flying school out of Helsinki. The Ilmailukoulu had been based at the Santahamina island garrison, and in 1929, as the Defence Forces’ history puts it, a new home for training was found at Kauhava in South Ostrobothnia. The Air Force’s own history says the school trained both flying personnel and aircraft maintenance professionals, for active duty and for the reserve.

The first equipment was a mix of whatever the young service had. The Air Force’s illustrated register of pre-war aircraft notes that the Aero A-11, of which eight were bought and which served from 1927 to 1939, was used as a trainer at the Kauhava Ilmailukoulu from 1929. It was a front-line reconnaissance biplane pressed into schoolwork, a pattern the school would repeat for decades as combat types were handed down to the instructors.

On 1 January 1938 the school was renamed Ilmasotakoulu, usually translated as the Air Force Academy. By then Europe was re-arming and the Finnish Air Force had begun the 1936 programme that brought the Fokker D.XXI and the Blenheim. Kauhava’s job was to produce the people to fly them, and the name change marked the school’s shift from general aviation training to preparing officers for air war.

The Winter War began on 30 November 1939 and the Continuation War followed in June 1941. Throughout both, Kauhava stayed a school rather than a front-line base. The Defence Forces’ unit history gives the output for 1939–1944: 900 pilots, 100 flying instructors, 240 observers and 100 gunners and radio operators. For an air force that entered the Winter War with just over 100 combat aircraft, that pipeline mattered as much as any purchase of fighters abroad.

The school changed its name during the war. According to the history published by LSK Business Park, the company that now owns the site, it was called Lentosotakoulu from 1 February 1941 to 1 December 1952, before taking back the Ilmasotakoulu name; the Defence Forces’ page confirms that it used the Ilmasotakoulu name in 1938–1941 and again in 1952–2004 without naming the wartime title.

The Air Force’s wartime trainers included the 30 Focke-Wulf Fw 44 J Stieglitz biplanes bought from Germany in April 1940 served mainly as advanced trainers and liaison aircraft during the war and stayed in service until May 1960. The Fiat G.50, which scored 99 victories for 3 losses in Finnish service, had its last example struck off charge at Kauhava on 13 December 1946.

The Paris Peace Treaty capped Finland’s air force, and jet training had to be built within those limits. The Fouga Magister arrived in 1958: 18 were bought from France and 62 were built under licence by Valmet between 1958 and 1967. Finnish airmen called it Kukkopilli, the ocarina, after the sound of its Marboré engine. The Saab Safir, of which the Air Force received 36, served as the primary trainer.

The decisive infrastructure change came in 1960, when Kauhava received a paved runway. The Defence Forces’ history calls this the start of a new era in the school’s history. From then on students could go from piston trainers to jets without leaving the base. The school kept the Ilmasotakoulu name from 1952 until the end of 2004, and the hard runway of that era survives as runway 17/35, 2,700 metres long and 60 metres wide, still the most visible trace of the Air Force on the Kauhava plain.

The learning had a cost. The Air Force’s official list of military aviation accidents since 1970 records five fatal Magister crashes of Ilmasotakoulu aircraft in 1972–1977 alone, among them a student pilot killed at Kauhava on 15 June 1977 during an aerobatic exercise, and another fatal Magister crash on the sea ice off Lohtaja in 1985. Safir and Magister both served into the 1980s; the Magister was superseded by the Hawk in 1988.

Two new types rebuilt the syllabus in the early 1980s. The Valmet L-70 Vinka, a domestic primary trainer that first flew at Halli on 1 July 1975, replaced the Safir; 30 were built for the Air Force. Sources differ on its service entry: English-language references give 13 October 1980 with deliveries to 1982, while the Air Force itself has written that it was in service from 1982. Students flew about 100 hours on it before moving to jets.

The jet was the BAE Hawk. Finland and Britain announced the deal for 50 Hawk Mk 51s in January 1978; four were built in Britain and the rest assembled by Valmet at Kuorevesi, and the first arrived on 19 December 1980. In those years the Hawks were spread across the air commands as well as the school, and Patria’s history of the type notes that fatigue cracks in the 1990s forced a structural programme and the purchase of seven Mk 51As in 1993 to replace lost airframes.

Kauhava’s Hawks were not spared accidents. On 1 September 2004 an Ilmasotakoulu Hawk, HW-325, crashed in a low turn in bad weather near Siikainen during a navigation training flight, and the pilot was killed. It was the first fatal accident of a Kauhava school aircraft in the official list since the Lohtaja Magister crash of 1985, nearly two decades earlier, and it came in the last year the school at Kauhava carried the Ilmasotakoulu name.

On 1 January 2005 the Air Force reshuffled its schools. The Signals School at Tikkakoski became the Ilmasotakoulu, and the Kauhava school took the name Lentosotakoulu; the Air Force now calls it the Training Air Wing in English. The Defence Forces’ history explains the trade that went with it: basic flight training on the Vinka was handed to the defence group Patria, and the Vinka fleet, until then based mainly at Kauhava, moved to Tikkakoski.

In return Kauhava got the jets. The Hawk fleet, previously dispersed among the air commands, was concentrated at Kauhava, where advanced and tactical flight training was given as one effort. Patria’s account links the decision to an unexpected pilot shortage after about 70 Air Force pilots left for the airlines. In June 2007 Finland bought 18 used Hawk Mk 66s from Switzerland for 41 million euros, delivered in 2009–2010.

The pipeline is visible in individual careers. The Air Force’s biography of Captain Petteri Wahlgren of the Midnight Hawks records that after graduating from the pilot track in August 2012 he did his Hawk advanced training at the then Lentosotakoulu in Kauhava and went on to Hornet training in the Lapland Air Wing at Rovaniemi in summer 2014.

The Defence Forces reform launched in 2012 brought what the Air Force calls some of the most comprehensive organisational changes in its history. The Air Force Technical School was disbanded at the end of 2013 and the Training Air Wing at Kauhava at the end of 2014. The Hawks moved to Fighter Squadron 41 at Tikkakoski, and in 2015 the Defence Forces merged what it called the discontinued Kauhava Lentosotakoulu into the Air Force Academy there. All basic military flight training in Finland now takes place at Tikkakoski.

The school’s last full year of flying brought its last fatal accident. On 13 November 2013 two Lentosotakoulu Hawk Mk 66s, HW-369 and HW-372, collided during a dogfight exercise over the Salamajärvi area at Perho; one pilot ejected and the other was killed. Both were ex-Swiss Mk 66s bought in 2007. The Hawk fleet was shrinking anyway: reference works record that 41 of the 67 Hawks Finland had owned were retired between 2012 and 2016, and Patria gives 32 modernised Hawks remaining in service.

The garrison did not stand empty. LSK Business Park Oy, founded on 11 February 2014 by a group of local entrepreneurs, bought the Kauhava Flight Academy area and the Kokkola weapons depot on 30 April 2014 and took them over at the start of 2015. It now runs 420 hectares with 45,000 square metres of offices, workshops and stores, about 50 tenants in some 25 sectors, accommodation for 475 people and a drag strip. The runway is an uncontrolled civil aerodrome run by the Ilmasotakoulun Lentokerho flying club, with no winter maintenance. Figures for jobs lost locally were not found in the sources consulted.