Ohakea was a product of the late-1930s expansion that turned New Zealand’s small permanent air force into an independent service. NZHistory records that construction began in 1937 on new bases at Whenuapai in Auckland and at Ohakea in the Manawatū; Woodbourne followed a year later. English Wikipedia credits the plan to RAF Wing Commander Ralph Cochrane, whose review of New Zealand’s air defence the government accepted at the end of 1935.

The station was meant to house a bomber force of 30 Vickers Wellingtons. Steel was scarce, so the designer, Charles Turner, built the two main hangars as monolithic reinforced-concrete structures, 61 metres across and 18 metres high; according to Wikipedia, citing the historian Matthew Wright, they were finished in 1939 at about £76,750 each. The Wellingtons never arrived. When war broke out New Zealand offered the aircraft and their crews to Britain, where they became No. 75 (NZ) Squadron RAF.

Instead, Ohakea became the RNZAF’s main operational training base for the war, converting pilots to fighters and training observers, navigators and air gunners, while front-line squadrons went to the Pacific.

After the war Ohakea became the home of New Zealand’s combat jets. No. 75 Squadron re-formed here in 1946 from No. 2 Squadron and flew Mosquitos, then Vampires from 1951 to 1970, with a Canberra detachment in Singapore from 1958 to 1962. No. 14 Squadron made Ohakea its home from 1959 between tours at Tengah during the Malayan Emergency and the Confrontation with Indonesia.

In 1970 the Skyhawks arrived: ten A-4Ks and four two-seat TA-4Ks bought new from the United States. The Air Force Museum notes that NZ6205 reached Auckland aboard USS Okinawa on 17 May 1970 and served most of its life with No. 75 Squadron at Ohakea; it was also the first RNZAF A-4 upgraded under Project Kahu in the late 1980s. No. 14 Squadron, meanwhile, trained fast-jet pilots on Strikemasters and then Aermacchi MB-339s.

In 2001 the government scrapped the RNZAF’s air combat force, disbanding both Skyhawk squadrons (Nos 2 and 75) and the MB-339 squadron (No. 14), as NZHistory records. The formal end came at Ohakea on 13 December 2001, when the three squadron standards were laid up in the presence of the Governor-General, Dame Silvia Cartwright. She told the parade that No. 75 Squadron’s history could be traced back to the Royal Flying Corps in 1916.

The aircraft lingered. The Skyhawks and trainers were stored, and on 30 July 2004 NZ6205 made the last flight by a Skyhawk in RNZAF service, from Ohakea to Woodbourne. The wisdom of the decision is still argued over in New Zealand; this page records the decision and its dates, not a verdict on it.

Two decades later Ohakea was rebuilt as the centre of the new air force. Work on a $250 million hangar, taxiway and apron complex for the P-8A Poseidon began in December 2020. RNZ, visiting in March 2022, described two hangars 180 metres long, 80 metres wide and 26 metres high, a mission support and operations centre, maintenance facilities and a training wing with a full flight simulator; the roofs were built on the ground and lifted into place. Manawatū District’s mayor, Helen Worboys, told RNZ that defence was the district’s second-largest industry after primary food production.

The first Poseidon, NZ4801, landed at Ohakea in December 2022 (the Ministry of Defence gives 12 December, RNZ 13 December) and all four had been delivered by July 2023. The Ministry says the Te Whare Toroa facility reached practical completion in December 2024 and that the flight simulator was delivered in April 2025. RNZ reported in November 2025 that Ohakea is to receive further upgrades under the government’s $2.5 billion defence estate programme.