Posted to Paradise: RAF Veterans remember Gan, part two

As I sit with a gin and tonic overlooking the blue lagoon at Equator Village, I try to imagine what Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II must have been thinking when in 1972 she visited what was then one of the most glamorous Royal Air Force base locations in the world – RAF Gan.

Back in the seventies well before the advent of resorts the Maldives was the scene for the ‘real jet set’ – the RAF Far East Air Force pilots who used the former RAF base as a layover location long before the advent of tourism to the region.

Enviably located south of the equator RAF Gan in Addu, was a staging post during the Second World War and continued to be a base for thousands of air force personnel through the cold war. It was handed back to the Maldivian government on March 29, 1976.