Ali Matan Hashi, Somalia's first pilot and person principally responsible for organizing the SAF, was its founder and served as its the country's first air chief.

The Corpo Aeronautico della Somalia was established in the 1950s, and was first equipped with a small number of Western aircraft, including two Douglas C-47 Skytrains, eight Douglas C-53 Skytrooper Dakota paratroop variants, two Beech C-45 Expeditors for transport tasks, two North American T-6 Texans (H model), two Stinson L-5 Sentinels, and six North American P-51 Mustangs for use as fighter aircraft.

[7] Two Heliopolis Gomhouria light aircraft soon arrived from Egypt (Egyptian-built Zlín 381 Czech licence versions of the German Bücker Bü 181 Bestmann), and eight Piaggio P.148 trainers were donated by Italy in 1962.

[7] On 15 October 1969, while paying a visit to the northern town of Las Anod, Somali President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke was shot dead by one of his bodyguards.

A military coup d'état took place on October 21, 1969, the day after his funeral, in which the Somali Army seized power without encountering armed opposition.

She received training on single-propeller aircraft, and later earned a scholarship to study at the United States Air Force Academy.

According to Nelson et al. in 1980, out of approximately twenty-one Somali combat aircraft, less than half a dozen — MiG-17s and MiG-21s — were reportedly kept operational by Pakistani mechanics.

The shortage of combat aircraft was reportedly being addressed by the planned delivery of thirty Chinese Shenyang J-6 fighter-bombers, which began to arrive in the country in 1981.

The relationship supposedly began on December 18, 1984, when South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha visited Somalia to hold discussions with Barre.

In exchange, South Africa supposedly arranged to ship spare parts and ammunition for Hawker Hunter fighter aircraft that the United Arab Emirates had supplied to Somalia, and to cover the salaries of ten former Rhodesian Air Force pilots already in Somalia helping to train Somali pilots and technicians and flying combat missions in the north.

[21] Genocide scholar Adam Jones said the following of Barre's campaign against the Isaaq: In two months, from May to July 1988, between 50,000 and 100,000 people were massacred by the regime's forces.

By then, any surviving urban Isaaks – that is to say, hundreds of thousands of members of the main northern clan community – had fled across the border into Ethiopia.

By the time President Barre fled Mogadishu for his home region of Gedo in late January 1991, the country's air force had effectively ceased to exist amid the Somali Civil War.

On October 29, 2012, 40 former senior Somali National Army and Air Force officers participated in a three-day workshop called Improving Understanding and Compliance with International Humanitarian Law (IHL), organized by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in Djibouti.

The aircraft were delivered as part of a larger shipment of weapons to boost Somalia's counter-insurgency capabilities in its efforts against Al-Shabaab.

[34] Somali Air Force servicemen wore green flight suits with shoulderboards indicating their rank, along with a visored pilot mask and helmet when actively flying.