The airfield at Rayak is older than the Lebanese state. Christian Kirchen’s history for the Goethe-Institut traces the first runway, “a simple track of sand”, to a Bavarian air regiment founded at Oberschleißheim in 1912 and sent to the Ottoman front in the First World War; English Wikipedia dates the strip to 1914 and credits German engineers. Two buildings clad in corrugated steel, probably hangars, and a timber-framed building near the runway survive from that time, and a 2021 photo essay on the base notes that the former barracks of the German engineers are still in use.

Under the French mandate that followed the First World War, Rayak became a French base. An account of the air force’s early years republished by GlobalSecurity calls it the “jewel” of the air bases under the mandate. In the Second World War it passed to Vichy France, and the Goethe-Institut records that German pilots on their way to Baghdad were given permission to land in the Bekaa. When British and Australian forces invaded Syria and Lebanon in June 1941, the Australian 25th Brigade was given the task of advancing on what Wikipedia calls the large Vichy French air base at Rayak.

The same photo essay lists what is left of those decades: corrugated hangars built for Vichy fighters, an abandoned French military hospital and a wartime jail. It counts German, Ottoman, French, Vichy French, Australian, Free French, Lebanese and Syrian control of the base before it returned to Lebanon. The Syrian period is that author’s account and was not confirmed in an official source.

Lebanon assumed command of Rayak on 1 August 1945, according to English Wikipedia, but the French air force stayed until 1949. When it left, reconstruction of the administration building, hangars and control tower took more than two months, the account republished by GlobalSecurity says. The Lebanese Army dates the founding of the air force to 10 June 1949 at Rayak, under Lieutenant Colonel Emile Boustany; GlobalSecurity and Wikipedia give 1 June, and GlobalSecurity says Boustany had been assigned to the task on 13 May 1949.

The first aircraft were Percival Prentices and Proctors, and the first instructors were foreign: four from the Royal Air Force, two former Luftwaffe pilots who had trained Syrian pilots, Italians and a French detachment, according to the same account. The first pilot course graduated on 1 July 1952. MILAVIA describes Rayak as the air force’s sole base in those years, home of the training squadron.

The sources disagree on when the headquarters left. GlobalSecurity says the air force command moved to Beirut on 1 December 1954, when Rayak became a separate command under Colonel Wajih Karam; the Lebanese Army’s own history says the headquarters stayed at Rayak until 1969, when it moved to the Ministry of National Defence.

When the army split in 1976, most of the air force’s flying assets were at Rayak, with the helicopters at Beirut and the Mirages at Kleyate. English Wikipedia’s article on the breakaway Lebanese Arab Army says its pro-Syrian Vanguard faction was headquartered at Rayak and that its men were mostly confined to barracks or guarding the adjoining air base.

In September 1983, during the Mountain War, Rayak was shelled by the Syrian Army, according to Wikipedia’s account of that war, and the Hunters moved to an improvised strip at Halat on the coast near Byblos. The Hunters were grounded in 1994.

On 13 July 2006, the second day of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli jets attacked Rayak and the Qlayaat military airport in the north, destroying their runways. Wikipedia’s timeline of the war records Israel’s claim that the runways were used by Hezbollah to transfer supplies, and notes that these were the first attacks on the Lebanese army in that conflict. The Lebanese government called Israel’s response disproportionate and asked for a ceasefire.

In August 2007, after Nahr al-Bared, the army decided to put its Hunters back into service; spare parts, including cartridges for the Martin-Baker ejection seats, held the work up. On 12 November 2008, fifty years after the type entered Lebanese service, four of the eight surviving Hunters, one two-seater and three single-seaters, returned to service with 2nd Squadron at Rayak, according to English Wikipedia. MILAVIA counted four operational Hunters at Rayak in 2011, three FGA.70s and a T.66.

It did not last. The commander of the air force, Brigadier General Ziad Haikal, told Defense News in 2021 that the Hunters had been nonoperational since 2010 for lack of money; they were formally retired in 2014. In August 2021 five Hunters and their spares were offered to Canada’s Lortie Aviation for about $1 million, for use as adversary aircraft in training.

Two Hunters stayed at Rayak for the museum. The air force museum occupies a single hangar and is not open to the public; visits need the permission of the air force. Aviation Museum EU lists eight aircraft: Vampire T.55 L-154, Hunter F.6 L-271, Alouette II L-302, Alouette III L-329, AB212 L-557, Magister L-602 and Gazelles L-801 and L-809. Wikipedia’s list adds a T-6 and the air force’s single de Havilland Dove.