The RAAF opened Williamtown on 15 February 1941, and Wikipedia’s account of why is plain: to protect the strategic port and steelworks at Newcastle. In its first years it was a training and forming-up station rather than a front-line base. The Williamtown Flying School occupied 62 buildings housing 366 officers and men, and several squadrons raised under the Empire Air Training Scheme formed here before going overseas. No. 4 Operational Training Unit worked from the field from October 1942 until it disbanded in April 1944.

The airfield began with four runways of about 1,100 m each. What survived into the jet age was a single runway, 12/30, which Defence now shares with Newcastle Airport under a lease arrangement. That arrangement is unusual for a front-line fighter base, and it is one reason the noise and land-use questions around Williamtown are as much civil as military.

Williamtown’s identity as Australia’s fighter base dates from the 1950s. No. 77 Squadron became operational here on 4 January 1955 and began receiving CAC Sabres in November 1956; No. 3 Squadron re-formed at Williamtown on 1 March 1956. Both later spent years at Butterworth in Malaya, and Williamtown became the home station to which squadrons returned and from which new types were introduced.

The Mirage III was the next step. No. 77 Squadron flew its first Mirage sorties here on 7 July 1969 after returning from Butterworth, and kept the type until 27 November 1987. Fighter training ran through No. 2 Operational Conversion Unit. Not every lesson was cheap: No. 3 Squadron’s history records that Wing Commander Vance Drummond was killed during air combat manoeuvres with No. 2 OCU in May 1967.

The F/A-18 Hornet made Williamtown what it is today. Wikipedia records that the first two Australian Hornets, A21-101 and A21-102, arrived on 16 and 17 May 1985, and that No. 2 OCU began the first conversion course on 19 August 1985. No. 3 Squadron became the first operational Hornet unit on 29 August 1986 and No. 77 Squadron received its first aircraft on 29 June 1987. No. 75 Squadron took its Hornets north to Tindal in May 1988, leaving Williamtown with two fighter squadrons and the training unit.

The fleet lost four aircraft and their pilots in 1987–1992, one of them with a DSTO scientist aboard; three of the four came down in Queensland, and the source used places none of them at Williamtown. Williamtown squadrons flew the Hornet to Diego Garcia in 2001–2002 and to the Middle East; No. 3 Squadron deployed for Operation Okra in April 2016. The type’s formal retirement ceremony was held at Williamtown on 29 November 2021, after nearly 408,000 fleet hours. Twenty-five airframes went to Canada (18 to fly, seven for spares) for CA$90 million.

Environmental approval for F-35 operations was published on 17 July 2015, and the Air Force says the first F-35A was accepted into Australian service in 2018; Wikipedia dates the first arrival for permanent basing at Williamtown to December 2018. No. 3 Squadron stopped flying Hornets at the end of 2017 to convert and was operational on the F-35A in 2021; No. 77 Squadron flew its last Hornet sortie on 11 December 2020 and began converting in January 2021. Wikipedia gives the plan as 56 of the 72 jets based here, the rest at Tindal.

Living next to a fighter base has costs. The Air Force sets night flying limits (to 10 pm, 11 pm in daylight saving) and keeps low flying to designated airspace about 200 km west. More serious was the discovery that firefighting foam used at the base had contaminated groundwater with PFAS chemicals; Wikipedia records class actions by residents and continuing national concern. The settlement figures were not confirmed from a source reached for this dataset and are not given here.