When the Dutch Ministry of War decided in 1939 to build an airfield at Maospati, in the regency of Magetan, the landscape was rice paddies and small Javanese villages. The runway they planned -- 1,586 meters long and 53 meters wide, at 120 meters above sea level -- required far more land than the paddies could spare. Entire communities were uprooted. Ngujung, Lemahbang, Kinandang, and Kincang Kulon were relocated completely. Residents of Pandeyan were split in two, the southern half moved north across the main road to settle in what became the villages of Bogorejo and Sukolilo. Some families received compensation and moved voluntarily; others were part of what Javanese call bedol desa -- whole-village relocations where an entire community picks up and reassembles itself elsewhere. The construction began with the runway, then three hangars in the Klecorejo, Setren, and Ngujung areas, followed by workshops, warehouses, and campements for Dutch soldiers and their families. The base was finished by the end of May 1940, just weeks after the Netherlands fell to Germany.

The completed airfield opened with 36 aircraft divided into three squadrons: thirteen Curtiss 75A-7 Hawks, seventeen Curtiss Wright 21B Interceptors, and six Brewster F2A Buffaloes for training. When the Pacific War erupted, Maospati became an Allied bastion in East Java, its pilots flying sorties against the advancing Japanese. The fighting was brutal and the losses heavy. Among the dead was the base commander himself, Captain H.J. Van De Pool, killed in action during the air battles that followed Japan's invasion of the Dutch East Indies. On March 8, 1942, after the Dutch high command surrendered, the Imperial Japanese Navy seized the airfield. Japanese Army units garrisoned the surrounding area, but unlike other captured airfields on Java, Maospati saw little Japanese air activity. The base served mostly as a warehouse for spare parts -- a strategic asset parked and waiting.

Japan's surrender in August 1945 did not bring peace to Maospati. On August 27, the Japanese commander handed the base over to the local Javanese administration, and within months it was absorbed into the fledgling Indonesian Air Force. Prof. Dr. Abdul Rahman Saleh, a physician turned military leader, was appointed base commander. But the Dutch returned, and during the independence struggle their warplanes hammered Indonesian airbases across Java. Maospati was badly damaged; only the Maguwo Air Base near Yogyakarta escaped heavy bombardment, shielded by persistent bad weather. The base survived, and on November 4, 1960, a ministerial decree formally renamed it Iswahjudi Air Force Base, honoring the pilot who had died thirteen years earlier trying to reach the country he had fought to create. As Indonesia's military grew, Iswahjudi was elevated to a Type A Main Air Base under Air Operations Command II.

Stand on the Iswahjudi flight line and the geography announces itself. To the west rises Mount Lawu, its peak at 10,712 feet, its slopes dotted with fifteenth-century Hindu temples that predate the airfield by five centuries. To the east stands Mount Wilis, reaching 8,400 feet. South of the base, the land folds into mountains that descend toward the Indian Ocean. North is lowland, the flat expanse of the Madiun plain where the highway forks toward Magetan and Ngawi. Today the base hosts the Indonesian Air Force's 3rd Air Wing, with three air squadrons, an engineering squadron, an air defense detachment, and a commando battalion. Fighter jets share the sky with the same thermals that rise off Lawu's volcanic slopes. The Pulung Air Weapon Range in nearby Ponorogo gives pilots a place to train, and the Dr. Efram Harsana Air Force Hospital serves the surrounding military community. Eight decades after Dutch engineers leveled Javanese villages to pour a concrete strip between two volcanoes, Iswahjudi remains one of Indonesia's most important military airfields.