Balaklava
Only a few kilometres from Sevastopol and now officially incorporated into the city borders
Another one for the Crimean War history books
The Battle of Balaklava 1854…..and the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade.
On the hill to the harbour entrance is the ruins of a 14th century Genoese fort which is being restored
The narrow harbour twists inland between high granite promontories on either side making it well protected and secure
Now Balaklava is fast becoming a seaside playground for the Russian and Ukrainian nouveau-riche which is an irony of the greatest proportions given that only as recently as 1990 Balaklava was a closed city and one of the most restricted and secret nuclear sites in the USSR.
The nuclear submarine base is a tunnel which extends through the headland with and entrance within the harbour and the exit opening to the Black Sea. The tunnel can accommodate 4 nuclear submarines in docks along with all the requisite equipment to arm, provision, maintain, and staff the subs. The base is considered to be indestructible tunnelled some 300 metres below the mountain surface and was designed to take a direct nuclear hit.
The façade of the exit is not concrete but hand laid stone, so as to blend in with the surrounding historical stone fortifications.
The roadways were built when the base was decommissioned and closed in 1993
Inside……..
Massive undergound complex of tunnels
Submarine pens for 4 subs end to end and a seperate drydock facility
Map showing the complex..the entrance is the lower right of the pic in the inner harbour
Hinge mechanism for blast doors
There is a small museum in the complex
Photo of missile being loaded on harbour dock before complex was operational
Much of the complex has yet to be restored
More huge doors…..
Taking a bit of an offroad jaunt around the outskirts of Balaklava
I came across this huge open-cut quarry…….
I don’t think that a natural colour for water……
….. and later, up a track and miles from a sealed road was another memorial….
…this one in memory of a particular army division which fought the Germans to a stalemate and subsequently drove them off the Crimean Peninsula…..and here it is off-road and basically out of sight but still well tended and maintained.
