The airfield goes by the motto of Always Vigilant, which is supported by its main motif, a black knight chess piece symbolising the aircraft's operational readiness in Tengah.

Tengah airfield was the target of carpet bombing when 17 Japanese Navy bombers conducted the first air raid on Singapore, shortly after the Battle of Malaya began.

In a 1990 memoir,[1] former Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot Terence O'Brien described leading (in late December 1941) a flight of Lockheed Hudsons from Britain to Singapore, which was already under attack by the time he and his aircrews arrived at Tengah.

Tengah had already been under air attack by the Japanese, but he said it was easy to imagine the once elegant, but now badly damaged, officers' mess just a few weeks before their arrival.

stood proud on a grassy slope to the south of the field, from the terrace you looked over the lush green grass, then a smooth-topped expanse of rubber plantation stretched away to misty blue hills .

the strains of a waltz coming from the dance band in the spacious lounge brilliantly lit and aswirl in colour.

During the Malayan Emergency, Tengah was used to house Avro Lincolns of the RAF and Royal Australian Air Force and Bristol Brigands of No.

On 3 September 1964, an Indonesian Air Force C-130 Hercules crashed into the Straits of Malacca while trying to evade interception by a Javelin FAW.9 of No 60 Squadron.

[3] As a show of force to deter the Indonesian President Sukarno from launching an all-out war during this period, the RAF also deployed a V bomber force detachment to Tengah in the form of Handley Page Victor B.1A bombers from 15 Squadron in August 1963, which was rotated with those dispersed to RAAF Butterworth in Malaysia.

According to British MoD documents declassified in 2000, up to 48 Red Beard tactical nuclear weapons were secretly stowed in a highly secured weapons storage facility at Tengah, between 1962 and 1970, for possible use by the V bomber force detachment and 45 Sqn Canberras for Britain's military commitment to South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

Despite this, the airfield continued to host British and Commonwealth air forces and troops under the auspices of the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) until 1976.

[12] Its purpose is to demonstrate the RSAF capability of generating air power in the shortest time from public roads.