Utapao Naval Air Base

U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Base
Part of Royal Thai Navy (RTN)
Coordinates	12°40′47″N 101°00′18″E / 12.67972°N 101.00500°E / 12.67972; 101.00500 (U-Tapao RTNB)
Type	Naval Air Base
Site information
Condition	Military Naval Air Base
Site history
Battles/wars	Vietnam War

Airfield information
IATA: none ICAO: none
Summary
Elevation AMSL	42 ft / 13 m
Coordinates	12°40′47″N 101°00′18″E / 12.67972°N 101.00500°E / 12.67972; 101.00500Coordinates: 12°40′47″N 101°00′18″E / 12.67972°N 101.00500°E / 12.67972; 101.00500
Map
VTBU Location of U-tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield
Runways
Direction Length Surface ft m 18/36 11,500 3,505 Asphalt
Source: DAFIF

U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield is a military airfield of the Royal Thai Navy approximately 140 kilometres (87 mi) southeast of Bangkok in the Ban Chang District of Rayong Province near Sattahip on the Gulf of Siam. It is serves as the home of the Royal Thai Navy First Air Wing.

U-Tapao (Thai: อู่ตะเภา) is a compound of อู่ cradle and ตะเภา trade winds, and derives from the site having once been a shipyard for construction of ruea-tapao (เรือตะเภา), a type of resembling a Qing Dynasty junk.

In 1961 the Royal Thai Navy won budget approval to build an airfield near U-Tapao village, Rayong Province.

In 1965 the US government gained the assent of the Thai government to allow US to upgrade the airfield and use it to support combat operations in Vietnam. Expansion of U-Tapao began in October 1965. The completed new facility opened at the end of 1967. The 11,000-foot (3,355 m) runway became operational on 6 July 1966 and U-Tapao received its first complement of USAF Strategic Air Command (SAC) KC-135 tankers in August 1966. The US had been flying B-52 bombing missions from Kadena AFB in Okinawa, but Okinawa was judged to be too far from Vietnam to meet mission requirements. An optimal solution was to base the B-52s in South Vietnam or Thailand. The cost to upgrade an existing Vietnamese air base was prohibitive, however, and base security was problematic. U-Tapao had an existing runway suitable for the bombers and the cost for upgrades to the base was minimal. In January 1967, negotiations between the US and Thai government started to base them at U-Tapao. The agreement, reached on 2 March 1967, allowed 15 bombers and their support personnel to be based at U-Tapao, with the provision that missions flown from Thailand would not over fly Laos or Cambodia on their way to targets in Vietnam. The first B-52's arrived on 10 April 1967. The next day, B-52 sorties were flown from U-Tapao. By 1972 there were 54 B-52 aircraft stationed in Thailand.