Former Hofn Air Station (H-3)

 former air force base, early warning radar

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Established in 1951 at the Southeastern tip of Iceland, the Hofn Air Station was one of four defensive radar sites placed at the four corners of Iceland to provide airspace monitoring over the strategically important area known as the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap. Originally consisting of temporary structures, the site was greatly expanded beginning in 1952 and eventually consisted of fifteen separate dormitory, support and operations buildings, a tropospheric scatter communications station, a high-frequency antenna farm and AN/FPS-3, AN/FPS-20A, AN/FPS-93A, and AN/FPS-6 radars.

Manned by the 933rd Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron from 1952 through 1961, control of the station was transferred to the 667th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron from the H-2 site at Langanes Air Station following the destruction and deactivation of the H-2 site after a severe Winter storm. Manned on a continuous basis from through 1984, the site provided General Surveillance Radar services to US and NATO Air Forces tracking Soviet Aircraft operating over the GIUK Gap.

Augmented by the addition of a minimally attended AN/FPS-117v5 radar system in 1984, the majority of the sites original radars were deactivated and removed while direct airspace monitoring duties were transferred to the 932d Air Control Squadron operating out of the Keflavik NAS Radar Operations Control Center (ROCC). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the manned mission at Hofn ended and on 30 June 1992 the site was formally inactivated. With the majority of its Cold War-era infrastructure razed and removed thereafter, the site continued to operate in a military capacity through 2006, after which the radar site was transferred to the Icelandic government and has since been used for civilian/commercial air traffic control purposes.

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