Thornhill was born of the Empire flying-training effort. Wikipedia records that in 1939 a committee surveyed three sites near Gwelo, as Gweru was then spelt, for a Commonwealth training group airfield; the first buildings went up in 1941 and official training began in March 1942. It was one of the stations of the Rhodesian Air Training Group, which taught aircrew from across the Commonwealth and its allies in the clear skies of the colony.

Wikipedia puts the number of pilots trained at Thornhill during the war at 1,810. After 1945 the RAF stayed on. The two accounts used here disagree about when it left: Wikipedia dates the final RAF graduation parade, when the RAF ensign was lowered, to 6 August 1953; the Rhodesian veterans’ history site says the RAF flew Harvards from Thornhill until the station closed in 1955 and was taken over by the Royal Rhodesian Air Force. The veterans’ list of station commanders begins with Squadron Leader Doug Whyte in November 1955.

When the Royal Rhodesian Air Force took over, Thornhill was a grass-and-piston airfield. According to the veterans’ site, the government built a runway, taxiway and hardstandings with a new control tower and radar between 1956 and 1957 so that jet training could move there. Wikipedia dates the start of the tarmac runways and concrete hardstands to 1956 and the first landing on the new runway, by a Vampire, to 11 December 1957; ground approach radar followed in December 1958.

Training moved with the concrete. No. 9 Short Service Unit flew the first Basic Flying School course at Thornhill in 1956 before moving to New Sarum for advanced work, and No. 10 Short Service Unit, in 1957–1958, was the first course to complete all its training there. By the end of the Bush War Thornhill was home to four squadrons: No. 1 with 12 Hunter FGA.9s, No. 2 with Vampires, No. 4 with Trojans, Reims-Cessna Lynxes and SF.260Ws, and No. 6 with Provosts and SF.260Cs, according to Wikipedia’s Rhodesian Air Force article.

Two years after independence the Air Force of Zimbabwe took delivery of eight BAE Hawk T.60s in July 1982. On the night of 25 July saboteurs attacked the aircraft at Thornhill. According to Wikipedia’s AFZ article, four Hawks, nine Hunters and one FTB-337G Lynx were damaged: one Hawk was written off, another was repaired on site and two went back to British Aerospace to be rebuilt. The sources used for this entry do not say who carried out the attack, and no attribution is given here.

Pakistan stepped in. Wikipedia says the Pakistan Air Force trained most of the new Zimbabwean pilots, helped reconstruct Thornhill and lent Air Marshal Azim Daudpota as Chief of Air Staff from 1983 to 1986. In 1986, the year Josiah Tungamirai succeeded him, the AFZ took delivery of Chinese F-7s, the first supersonic aircraft Zimbabwe has flown; today No. 5 Squadron flies them from Thornhill.

After Western sanctions cut off Hawk spares in the early 2000s, Zimbabwe bought 12 Hongdu K-8 jet trainers from China, delivered in 2006. Wikipedia’s Thornhill article places them with No. 2 Squadron here, alongside No. 5’s F-7s and No. 6’s SF.260 basic trainers, and cites Jane’s Defence Weekly for a simulation centre costing about US$41.5 million under construction in September 2006.

Flying from Thornhill has a heavy price. A K-8 crashed into the married quarters on the base on 5 September 2008, killing both pilots (Wikipedia). Military Africa lists SF.260 losses in October 2018 at the base, in November 2020 near Somabhula, in February 2023 near Mlezu College and on 9 September 2025 just after take-off. In 2025 alone a K-8 trainee died near Guinea Fowl in February and an F-7 pilot on the Gweru–Mvuma road in May, according to NewZimbabwe. In each case the air force announced a board of inquiry; findings have not been published in the sources checked.

In November 2017 the government gazetted Statutory Instrument 138, renaming barracks and bases after national heroes. Thornhill became Josiah Tungamirai Air Force Base, after the former ZANLA commissar who led the AFZ from 1986 to 1992; Fylde, near Chegutu, became Jason Ziyapapa Moyo Air Force Base.