Kant Air Base - History

History

In 1941, a Soviet Air Force base and pilot training school were set up near the city of Kant, based on a school evacuated from Odessa.

During World War II, 1507 Soviet military pilots were trained there and from 1956. The school also trained foreign pilots. Among its graduates were Egyptian former president Hosni Mubarak and the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, as well as India's Air Chief Marshal Dilbagh Singh and South Yemen Brigadier Pilot Shakeeb Khobani.

In 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, control of the air base was transferred to Kyrgyzstan.

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