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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Secret Underground Airbases

I'm looking at the Military Photos dot net website this morning and there is a post talking about a military air base in Northwest Iraq, so I look it up on Google Maps and sure enough, there it is, until I zoom in for a closer look and then it disappears and is replaced by an image of the airport that was there before. Well, that's kind of curious, but not all that interesting. Let's see what else there is to see around here. I zoom out and notice a jag in the border with Jordan. Jordan is kind of a funny shaped country anyway, what with that "hatchet handle" (one of my school teachers' terms) sticking out to the East. Who knows why it is that way, but this jag is in the end of the handle, and it's not all that big, maybe 10 miles across. This is the middle of the desert. Why would anyone care where the fool border is way out here? Well, maybe there is something here worth quibbling over. Zoom in a bit and I find there is something, an old, abandoned air base. Look it up on Wikipedia and find that it is one of five built by the Yugoslavians 35 years ago. Okay, crazed despot has dreams of many giant airbases in the middle of nowhere. Why? No explanation for crazy. But in the Wikipedia article (and repeated in several similar articles on similar places) is this:
In addition, underground facilities that could shelter between four and ten aircraft on average were constructed. In order to build these the Yugoslavs used equipment and construction techniques identical to that use in underground oil-storage depots, additionally concealing the extension and the true purpose of the whole project. The underground facilities were all hardened to withstand a direct hit by a tactical nuclear bomb, buried up to 50 meters below the ground and consisted of the main aircraft "hangar" (consisting of two floors in several cases, connected by 40ts hydraulic lifts), connected with operations, maintenance, and logistical facilities via a net of underground corridors.
Well, that's just crazy, but when you are dealing with the military and paranoia, nothing is too far round the bend, so I go looking for confirmation. I don't find any, but I do find reports of underground airbases in Albania and China. Albania's look a little sad. Hard to tell about the Chinese. Well, they are inscrutable.



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