Balaklava. Nuclear submarine base

    Balaklava is a town in the Crimea, Ukraine which has an official status of a district of the city of Sevastopol.

    Balaklava has changed hands many times during its history. A settlement at its present location was originally founded under the name of Symbolon by the Ancient Greeks, for whom it was an important commercial city. 

  During the Middle Ages, it was controlled by the Byzantine Empire and then by the Genoese who conquered it in 1365. The Byzantines called the town Yamboli and the Genoese named it Cembalo. The Genoese built a large trading empire in both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, buying slaves in Eastern Europe and shipping them to Egypt via the Crimea, a lucrative market hotly contested with by the Venetians. It is believed that it was on board a Genoese trading cog sailing back to Genoa from Balaklava (or Kaffa, according to some chronicles) that the Black Death first arrived in Europe in the mid-14th c.

      The ruins of a Genoese fortress positioned high on a clifftop above the entrance to the Balaklava Inlet are a popular tourist attraction and have recently become the stage for a Medieval festival. In 1475 the growing Ottoman Empire took possession of Balaklava renaming it Balıklava ("a fish nest" in Turkish), which was slowly corrupted over time to its present form. During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774, the Russian troops conquered the Crimea in 1771. Thirteen years later, Crimea was definitively annexed by the Russian Empire. After that, Crimean Tatar and Turkish population was replaced by Greeks from the Archipelago. In 1787 the city was visited by Catherine the Great.


Nuclear submarine base.
From series of the american postcards about soviet military threat:


  But here is looks on in persisting lifes:
    One of the monuments is an underground, formerly classified submarine base that was operational until 1993. The base was said to be virtually indestructible and designed to survive a direct atomic impact. During that period, Balaklava was one of the most secret residential areas in the Soviet Union.

   Almost the entire population of Balaklava at one time worked at the base; even family members could not visit the town of Balaklava without a good reason and proper identification. The base remained operational after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until 1993 when the decommissioning process started. This process saw the removal of the warheads and low-yield torpedoes. In 1996, the last Russian submarine left the base, which is now open to the public for guided tours around the canal system, the base, and a small museum, which is now housed in the old ammunition warehouse deep inside the hillside.  

     Underground Cheops pyramid. "Object 825 GTS" - the so-called documents in this complex, yet conceived by Stalin as the construction protivoatomnoy protection of the first category. The leader was shocked by the results of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and decided thus to protect from attack submarine fleet to guarantee the infliction of retaliation.

     Charm and originality of Balaklava is in the unique long and deep bay on one side of which high on the mountain scenic ruins of medieval fortress Chembalo Genoese, but on the other - climbs Mount Tavros that is translated from Turkish means "empty". It was something and built a subterranean city. His premises were vydolbleny in the rock and covered with reinforced concrete, the thickness of which was 56 meters. 

     In the case of a direct threat of nuclear attack - a facility could withstand a direct hit charge capacity of up to 100 kilotons - great thickness sealed doors closed, and the plant is capable of self-sufficiency was there 3 years, along with 3000 people - all of the then population of Balaklava.
     Autonomous excess air, powerful diesel generators, fuel and water mains, underground rail gave way to fully isolate the objective from the external environment. There were well-equipped command posts, bakeries, storage facilities for products and lubricants, hospital, housing for troops, dining halls, kitchens, bathrooms, showers and even lounges.
     From a military point of view "Object 825 GTS" was an underground water channel combined with dry docks, for repair shops, warehouses for the storage of torpedo and other weapons. Combined underground water channel to accommodate submarines and 7 if necessary to repair them. Its depth is up to 8 meters in width - from 8 to 12 metres and a height of the arch channel - 18 metres. The total area of all premises and plant moves - 5100 square kilometres. m, the surface of the water under the ground - 3 thousand Apt. m. Length - 380 meters, the length of the dock - 110 meters.