Our correspondent has visited the site of what used to be the largest military facility on earth – an underground complex for servicing Soviet submarines hidden in Balaklava, a sea port in South Crimea. The ancient town of Balaklava turned into one of the most restricted and mystic locations of the U.S.S.R due to that highly classified facility.
Going deeper underground
The underground complex for servicing submarines was referred to as “Facility 825 GTS” in the Soviet-era documents. Josef Stalin reportedly ordered the construction of a national antinuclear defense facility of the first grade after he had been deeply impressed by the range of devastation inflicted by American A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. He believed the facility was a must for protecting the Soviet subs in case the nuclear hell broke loose and a guarantee for delivering a retaliation nuclear strike. The construction kicked off four years following the death of Stalin. It was completed in 1961.
The town of Balaklava features a uniquely located harbor that is long and deep.
One side of the harbor is lined by the picturesque ruins of Cembalo, a medieval Genoa fortress while the other one is topped by Mount Tauros, the name stands for “empty” in Turk. It’s the mountain that hosted an entire underground facility inside. The concrete walls covering the premises hollowed out in the rock were 56 meters thick.
The facility was made to withstand the effect of a direct nuclear strike measuring up to 100 kilotons. The thick doors were to seal off the area in case of a nuclear threat thus enabling some 3,000 strong personnel to survive and operate for 3 years. The facility was equipped with machines providing an independent air supply, a number of powerful diesel power generators, and fuel and water pipelines. It also had an underground railroad track to service the needs of transportation, not to mention perfectly equipped command posts, bakeries, storage areas for lube and fuel, a hospital and living quarters, mess halls, galleys, bathrooms and shower rooms, even the recreation rooms for the personnel. All the above made it totally independent from the ground defense network.
The Facility 825 GTS was a combined water canal in terms of military engineering. It had a dry dock, repair workshops, warehouses for storing torpedoes and other weapons. There were two exit ways on either side of the mountain. There was an entrance way to the gallery from the harbor. The entrance way could be blocked by a inflatable boat lock as required. The other boat lock was mounted on the northern side of the mountain to seal the seaward gates. The both orifices in the rock were skillfully covered with camouflaged and nets.
I must reveal a few figures at this point just to make you realize how cyclopean the facility was. The total length of an underground tunnel was half a kilometer while a utility gallery housing main workshops ran for 300 meters. The flashlights we used for lighting our steps around the facility weren’t strong enough for us to estimate the length of the canal stated by our tour guide – 360 meters. But we were really impressed by the size of a concrete arch measuring 12 m wide by 18 m high. None of the tourists of our group dared approach the edge of the canal after being told that its depth was at least 7 meters.
Small wonder the underground galleries could easily accommodate 7 submarines of basic Soviet designs or up to 14 subs of different classes if need be. The estimated period of a complete overhaul of a submarine is said to have planned for 3 weeks maximum. The repair programs are said to have been conducted always on time during those 30 years of operations of the underground facility.
Weary subs
Today’s tourists are unable to witness the wonders produced by the Soviet navy installation hidden underground . Its glory belongs to the past.
The unique facility was vandalized in broad daylight during the division of the Black Sea Fleet. In 1991, submarines were removed from the installation, its unique equipment was dismantled and moved away, traces of secret technologies were destroyed. The rest of the equipment, namely pipework, cables, tanks, and all the metal objects including stairways and handrails were brutally ripped off and stolen. Who was behind those hideous acts of vandalism is still unknown.
Tourists today can only shine their flashlights over the concrete moldy walls with some twisted iron parts sticking out. A few instructions on handling the torpedoes are still around but the paint on them almost peeled off. There’s also a railroad track with a trolley for carrying weapons in sight. And the hermetically sealed doors are also rusting in peace. No thieves will ever be able to take them away. The canal disappearing in the dark holds still waters that look dead like in a river of oblivion. The facility of gigantic proportions that took a great deal of time, effort, and money to build in the past, these days it looks like a huge shabby relic of the Soviet military power. The picture strikes everyone that steps inside.
“I still remember the times when we were afraid of the Soviet Union. Now I’m sure that we did it with reason,” said John Hinkley from Connecticut, on emerging from the gallery. I met the American while touring the facility. It’s just amazing to find out that scores of tourists from Poland, Canada, U.S.A., Israel, Holland, France, Germany have already went down for a little bit of a nerve-racking experience even though a permanent ticket office is yet to be set up and guided tours became available not a long time ago.
If you want to learn more about the underground navy facility, you can ask around the local fishermen. All of them claim to have worked there. They just love telling you tall stories spiced with most incredible details, the ones that are normally left unsaid by the tour guides.
For example, the locals say that in days of old the sea approaches to the Balaklava facility were protected by specially trained dolphins and members of the navy special forces akin to the U.S. Navy Seals. The repair workers were escorted around the premises by armed seamen at all times while at work. Submarines entered and exited the harbor at nighttime only, so the electricity in the town of Balaklava was regularly shut off in those hours of harbor maneuvering. Rumor has it that a dry dock was swarming with live fish once the water was discharged after putting a sub put into place. The workers reportedly used some ingenious methods for smoking the fish to keep it from wasting away. As a result, a trail of zesty smoke was coming from the mountain as a sure sign of yet another weary sub coming under repairs for all the spies to see despite a cloak of secrecy hanging above the place.
Monument or museum or amusement park
It’s still unclear what this place is going to look like some day in the future. Is it going to be a museum? A monument to the Soviet military valor? A symbol to pacifism? According to a concept plan by the Central museum of Ukrainian armed forces, a museum will be filled with expositions covering several subjects, such as the history of the town itself, the Crimean War, the role of Sevastopol in the Great Patriotic War and the history of the Ukrainian navy. A number of dummy subs will be put afloat on the empty canal for effect.
Total area of the underground installation beneath Sevastopol is said to be 350 thousand square meters. A special commission formed by the city officials conducted search operations from 1984 to 1987 in order to recover information on every underground facility of the city. The commission took stock of more than 600 facilities located underground: command posts, communications centers, onshore artillery positions, storage rooms for torpedoes, missiles, bombs, powder-magazines, storage areas for military equipment and victuals, shelters for personnel and local population.
We won’t exaggerate much by saying that Soviet-era holiday-makers enjoying the Crimean sunshine and the sea were actually sleeping on a volcano.
