Tainan Airfield (present-day Tainan Airport)

Tainan Airfield (台南飛行場, also known as Einei Airfield) was proposed by the Tainan Prefecture government in 1935 and, after construction was completed on May 30, 1937, held its opening ceremony on June 27, 1937, initially serving the intra-island civilian routes operated by Japan Air Transport (日本航空輸送) that connected southwestern Formosa with Taihoku (Matsuyama, present-day Taipei Songshan Airport). In 1940 the field was taken over by the Navy, and civil flights moved to a new airfield at Yongkang.

On October 1, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy established the Tainan Air Group (台南海軍航空隊, Tainan Kōkūtai) at the airfield as part of the 23rd Air Flotilla. Just before the outbreak of the Pacific War, the unit comprised 45 Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighters and 12 Type 96 fighters, crewed largely by veterans of aerial combat over China during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

On December 8, 1941 (local time), 44 Tainan Air Group fighters launched from the airfield to escort IJN bombers on a 500-mile mission to attack American air bases at Clark and Iba on Luzon Island in the Philippines. The strike virtually destroyed General Douglas MacArthur's air forces on the ground, establishing Japanese air superiority over the Philippines in a single day. The Tainan Air Group subsequently produced more aces than any other fighter unit in the Imperial Japanese Navy, with pilots such as Saburō Sakai (who claimed 64 victories), Hiroyoshi Nishizawa (credited with over 80 victories and often described as Japan's top-scoring ace), Junichi Sasai, Watari Handa, Masaaki Shimakawa, and Toshio Ōta.

The veteran Tainan Air Group moved on to the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies and, in April 1942, to Rabaul and Lae (it was redesignated the 251st Air Group that November), but Tainan Airfield continued to function as a critical military installation. During the Formosa Air Battle (台湾沖航空戦) in October 1944, the base was involved in Japan's large-scale but ultimately unsuccessful counterattack against the U.S. Third Fleet.

In the final months of the war, the Imperial Japanese Army's 8th Flying Division (第八飛行師団) used airfields across Taiwan as staging bases for special attack (tokko) operations targeting Allied forces around Okinawa. Army kamikaze units departing from Taiwan were designated Makoto Flight Units (誠飛行隊), distinct from the Shinbu Units (振武隊) that operated from Kyushu; Tainan itself remained a naval base, where the 765th Naval Air Group was formed on February 5, 1945. From March through July 1945, American B-24 Liberators and B-25 Mitchells conducted sustained bombing campaigns against Tainan Airfield, destroying aircraft on the ground and cratering the runways.

After Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, the Republic of China Air Force took over the base. During the Cold War era, the United States Air Force established Tainan Air Station, with the 868th Tactical Missile Squadron activated there on July 8, 1958. American nuclear weapons were reportedly stationed at the base until their withdrawal in 1974. Today, Tainan Airport (IATA: TNN, ICAO: RCNN) operates as a joint military-civilian facility, shared between the ROCAF 1st Tactical Fighter Wing (flying F-CK-1 Ching-kuo fighters) and domestic/international commercial flights that resumed in 2013.