[3] Following the end of the First World War, the United States Navy gifted its aircraft and flying facilities in Nova Scotia to the Canadian government.

Changes to the organization of the air stations were deferred to the fall to avoid administrative issues during the flying season.

None of these changes, nor the official formation of the Royal Canadian Air Force on 1 April 1924, substantially altered the role of the station.

The station re-opened in the late spring of 1925 to resume photographic survey operations and artillery co-operation exercises.

[5]: 132–136  In July 1925, retroactive to 1 April, all the RCAF's civil operations stations were re-designated as numbered squadrons, with Dartmouth becoming No.

4 Squadron was inactive from the end of the 1925 flying season, but re-opened the station in 1927 and flew more hours than any previous year.

Operations for 1927 were mainly photographic surveys using a Canadian Vickers Varuna, but also included some early experiments in forest dusting with a Keystone Puffer.

The following year all photographic operations were re-organized as independent detachments reporting directly to CGAO headquarters, and the Dartmouth Air Station was placed on "care and maintenance" again at the end of the 1927 season.

[4]: 181–182, 197, 244 [5]: 138–139 [6]: 95 In May 1932 detachments of the Ottawa Air Station were formed at Dartmouth, Shediac, and Gaspé to assist the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in combatting rum-running.

When the RCAF decided, in 1937, to primarily operate landplanes for the defence of the Atlantic coast, Dartmouth was one of four locations selected for construction of a land aerodrome.

During the 1960s, the aerodrome at the former RCAF Station Debert was attached to HMCS Shearwater as a training location for carrier landings.

As part of the Department of National Defence's Shearwater Heliport Conversion Project, runway 10H/28H was reduced in length to the east end only in July 2007.

These changes allowed for heliport operations including instrument approaches[11] and were accompanied with the construction of other non-airfield facilities in support of the Maritime Helicopter Project.

12 Wing's squadrons at Shearwater Heliport in Nova Scotia and at Arundel Castle in British Columbia operate the Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone.

12 Wing operates out of two locations with four squadrons: Beginning in the 1970s, CFB Shearwater began hosting an Armed Forces Day every fall, typically on the weekend following Labour Day, and included an air show where the long and wide runways at Shearwater hosted some of the largest aircraft in the world, including the U.S. Air Force's C-5 Galaxy transport planes and B-52 Stratofortress bombers.

Organizers have stated that the "Atlantic Canada International Air Show" will likely rotate through the Shearwater airfield every second year.