[1] During a dormant period in 2009, the squadron was equipped with Dassault Mirage F1CT fighters and stationed at the BA 132 Colmar-Meyenheim Air Base.

The Normandie-Niemen Fighter Regiment (French: Régiment de Chasse Normandie-Niémen – (Russian: Нормандия — Неман) has adopted a number of formations and designations since 1942.

The squadron was reattached to the 30e Escadre de Chasse on 3 September 2015, and reformed at the BA 118 Mont-de-Marsan Air Base.

When General Charles de Gaulle called on Frenchmen to join him in London in his appeal of 18 June 1940, some went to Great Britain to fight with the Allies.

Colonel Charles Luguet, the air attaché of the Vichy government in Moscow, changed his allegiance to Free French.

On 19 February 1942, de Gaulle designated Luguet and Captain Albert Mirlesse (under the authority of General Valin) to negotiate with the Soviet Union.

[6] Negotiations were lengthy, and Colonel Pougachev (military chief of the mission in London) opposed a separate French group near the Red Army.

After lengthy negotiations with Colonel Levandovich, the military chargé d'affaires of international relations at the Soviet Air Ministry general staff headquarters,[8] the group left Riyaq airfield on 12 November 1942 and arrived on 28 November at Ivanovo air base (250 km north-east of Moscow), via Iraq and Iran.

Only six pilots remained from the original group, which had 72 air victories, by the time GC 3 moved to Tula on 6 November.

In their first year at the front, they claimed 86 kills (77 confirmed, 9 "probables") and 16 enemy aircraft damaged against a loss of 25 Yak fighters.

At the end of the month, Colonel Pierre Pouyade ordered the 303rd Aerial Division emblem (to which Normandie-Niemen belonged) painted on the Yaks.

The regiment went to Moscow in early winter for de Gaulle's diplomatic visit with Stalin; one-quarter of the pilots were given leave in France, reducing it to three escadrilles.

In giving the pilots of Normandie-Nièmen the honour of keeping their arms and allowing them to return to their homeland on their combat aircraft, the Soviet Union offered them the highest compensation.

The squadron moved to Reims – Champagne Air Base (BA 112) in June 1966, remaining there for almost 30 years as part of the 30e Escadre de Chasse.

On 9 May 1995, the 50th anniversary of Victory Day, the 18th Guards Assault Aviation Regiment of the Russian Air Force was renamed Normandiya-Neman.

[20] Based in Galenki, Primorsky Krai, in the Russian Far East as part of the 11th Air Army, the regiment flies Sukhoi Su-25 ground-attack aircraft.

Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Vladimir Putin unveiled a monument by Russian sculptor Andrey Kovalchuk commemorating the squadron in Moscow's Lefortovo Park on 10 October 2007.

[21] Veterans of the squadron and a French contingent from the unit participated in the 9 May 2010 Moscow Victory Day Parade in Red Square.

[26] From 13 to 25 April 2016, two Rafales from the squadron and two from the Escadron de Chasse 1/7 Provence were deployed to an RAF station as part of the Griffin Strike 2016 exercise.

With help from the Russian Ministry of Defense, French historian Pierre Malinowski discovered a World War II Yak-1 belonging to the squadron in August 2018.

The 1960 Franco-Russian film Normandie-Niémen, directed by Jean Dréville and Damir Viatich-Berejnykh, explores the arrival in Russia of the first twenty pilots for training and the formation of the squadron.

The character Lieutenant Duroc (Patrick Chauvel) describes his time with the Free French squadron in Pierre Schoendoerffer's 1992 film, Dien Bien Phu.