RAF Gan

Royal Air Force Station Gan, commonly known as RAF Gan, is a former Royal Air Force station on Gan island, the southern-most island of Addu Atoll, which is part of the larger groups of islands which form the Maldives, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Its motto is En Route, which signifies its importance as a strategic staging post for enabling RAF aircraft to reach their onward destinations at their bases in the Far East. Following the departure of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1976, the former RAF Gan airfield was developed into a civilian airport, and is now known as Gan International Airport. The area was originally established as a military base for the Royal Navy (RN) in . Royal Navy engineers began constructing airstrips on Gan island from crushed coral in August 1941 for the Fleet Air Arm (FAA). During World War II, in 1942, the Royal Air Force (RAF) had its bases in the islands of Addu Atoll, Maldives. The RAF first had a presence on Hithadoo in 1942, when a detachment of RAF personnel were sent from RAF China Bay in Ceylon to service and turn around the RAF Short Sunderland and PBY Catalina flying boats that were flying regularly into the Addu Atoll lagoon. At the end of the war, all military installations were either removed or abandoned. In 1956–57, at the request of SWRD Bandaranaike, the Royal Air Force handed over its bases in Ceylon to the Royal Ceylon Air Force. The loss of RAF Negombo meant that a replacement staging post was needed between its bases in the Middle East and Far East, and the location was virtually limited to Gan. Hence Royal Air Force Station Gan became established in the late 1950s as a stopover on the reinforcement route to the Far East Air Force based in Singapore. The previous reinforcement route had passed through countries that had formerly been British territory, but were now independent, and sometimes hostile nations. RAF Mauripur, to the west of Karachi, by then a Pakistan Air Force station, had RAF personnel attached for staging airfield purposes up until 1956, when the staging role between the Middle East and Far East fell to RAF Gan.