The Royal Air Force Gan Page

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst'.

From 1957 to 1976 R.A.F. Gan was the staging post in the Indian Ocean for British Servicemen and their Families traveling back and forth from the U.K. to Singapore and Hong Kong.

During those nineteen years thousands of R.A.F. personnel did a one year unaccompanied tour of duty on the island. It is to those R.A.F. servicemen that this site is dedicated.

The Maldives are a archipelago of islands in the Indian Ocean. They are located to the south west of the Indian sub-continent and run from a latitude of 7 degrees north to just south of the equator at 1 degree south.

Of the 1,190 islands that make up the Maldivian Republic only 198 are inhabited. Because of their low lying nature they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming and the corresponding rise in sea level.

The Maldive Islands became a British Protectorate in 1887. During the Second World War the British built naval bases at both the north and south ends of the archipelago.

In 1957 the air base was built on Gan, an island in the Addu Atoll. Addu Atoll being the southernmost group in the archipelago.

The Maldives became an Independent Republic in 1965 R.A.F. Gan continued to operate until 1976.

A reunion on the Island is planned for the Spring of 2010 - for more information select the following link:

Please feel free to contact the website administrator mailto:ianhunt94@yahoo.com with any comments and/or submissions.