In the 1960s and 1970s communist Albania, isolated from both blocs and allied only with China, built its defences on the assumption of invasion. Gjadër was the air force’s answer: a new jet base on the flat Zadrima plain, laid out against a mountainside so that aircraft could be towed off the runway into tunnels in the rock. Wikipedia dates construction to 1969 and says the tunnels could hold about 50 aircraft and their personnel, and that pilots had to avoid turning on take-off because of the mountain; those figures are not confirmed by an official source.

The ministry’s own account is simpler. It dates the base to 1974 and records that the first aircraft to land on the new runway were flown in from Rinas by two pilots, Haki Jupasi and Serafin Shegani, in supersonic MiG-19 and MiG-21 types. In Albanian service these were the Chinese-built Shenyang F-6 and Chengdu F-7A. Wikipedia gives a first landing on 10 July 1973 and an official opening on 15 March 1974.

Wikipedia names the unit Regiment 5646, later 4010, and says it was built up in 1976 with six FT-5 trainers and the F-7A squadron from Rinas in May and a second F-6 squadron from Kuçovë on 16 October. The ministry confirms only the essentials: the Gjadër Regiment of 1974 with MiG-19 and MiG-21 fighters.

After the fall of communism Albania opened itself to the West, and Gjadër’s position across the Adriatic from Italy and within reach of Bosnia made it useful to the United States. According to Wikipedia, which cites Jeffrey Richelson and Aviation Week, the CIA based two GNAT-750 drones and a satellite ground station at Gjadër from February to April 1994 to watch Bosnia and Yugoslavia, with mixed results.

The following year the US Army brought four Predators, flown in by C-130, with more than 70 personnel. Wikipedia says flying began in July 1995, that one Predator was lost over Bosnia on 11 August and a second destroyed on 14 August after an engine failure, and that the operation, Nomad Vigil, was extended from 60 to 120 days before moving to Taszár in Hungary in March 1996. Wikipedia’s Predator article dates Nomad Vigil to July–November 1995 and adds a third loss on 5 September, claimed as a shoot-down by Bosnian Serb forces. These accounts were not checked against US government records and are given as Wikipedia reports them.

In early 1997 the collapse of pyramid investment schemes led to armed unrest and a breakdown of state authority across much of Albania. Wikipedia records that Gjadër’s control tower and buildings were destroyed on 12 March 1997 and that the military abandoned the base on 16 March; it says flying ceased in 2000. Its source for the damage is not an official one.

The jets never left. When Defence Minister Mimi Kodheli inspected the base on 27 January 2014, the ministry reported 32 MiG aircraft, out of service for several years, kept in the tunnels, and said the minister had been briefed on the base’s problems. Her deputy, Dritan Hila, visited again in April 2014.

On 13 July 2024 the ministry marked fifty years of Gjadër by announcing that it was back in use for Black Hawk helicopter flying, with US instructors present. Air Force commander Brigadier General Ferdinant Dimo said the revived base would provide new infrastructure for training helicopter crews and giving new pilots their basic training. The same year, under a protocol signed by Giorgia Meloni and Edi Rama on 6 November 2023, Italy began building a migrant centre on the former air base, which Wikipedia says was built from March 2024; the centre has faced repeated challenges in Italian courts.