On what is now the border between Croatia and Bosnia, lies, underneath a mountain, one of the biggest underground airbases in the World. Željava Airbase was a Yugoslav military infrastructure that stored airplanes and artillery since right after WW2 until the end of the Cold War, it also served as an airplane factory and an advanced communications centre, with the advantage of being an early warning system for Soviet ballistic missiles. Most powerful European countries had something similar at the time of the 2 world wars, there was the Swiss aircraft caverns each with space to accommodate 30+ airplanes or the Swedish F9 hangar which was design to withstand a nuclear blast… but what made Željava unique, was its location and magnitude.
Although the country would enjoy the benefits of relative peace and free trade as part of the Non-Aligned Movement, 3 years after the US unleashed nuclear weapons against Japan, construction began on Željava Airbase. Protected by the mountain above, it was claimed this new facility could withstand a direct hit from a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb – the same force as the ‘Fat Man’ bomb that fell on Nagasaki.
The project cost the equivalent of $6 billion of today’s money, being one of the largest – and most expensive – military construction projects that Europe had ever seen, just to give an idea, its cost is equal to roughly three times the contemporary annual military budgets of Croatia and Serbia combined, and fun fact, you are probably wondering as I did, how did they manage to gather so much money to fund the construction? Well they just asked for capital from the World Bank with the excuse that it was going to be used in the construction of new motorways, and voilá you just got yourself enough money to build a colossal military airbase that overshadows any Hollywood’s villain headquarters.
With concrete and steel blast doors throughout the complex, the base could be airtight sealed to put it on lock-down in the case of an emergency, not only to keep things out of the complex, but to keep them in. The underground facility was lined with semi-circular concrete shields, arranged every ten metres, to cushion the impact of incoming munitions and, as can be seen with this map, the tunnels went on for 3.5 kilometres, providing the bunker with four entrances protected by 100-ton pressurized doors.
The complex included an underground water source, power generators, crew quarters, and it also housed a mess hall that could feed 1,000 people simultaneously, along with stores of food, fuel and arms sufficient to last 30 days, in case some country dared attack this impenetrable facility. Fuel was supplied by a 20-kilometre underground pipe network connected to a military warehouse on Bihać, the nearest city.
The Airbase was completed in 1968, 20 years after the beginning of its construction and already in it early stages it could rival the systems in place by the US and Nato at the time. Serving as a central hub for Yugoslavia’s integrated air defence programme, the facility featured short-range tracking and targeting radars, and was armed with Soviet-made 2K12 surface-to-air missiles with orders to fire immediately upon anyone attempting to enter without previous authorization.
The layout of the base was remarkable as well, it had 4 entrances and 5 different runways to ensure that even if some of them would get destroyed in an attack, the remaining ones could easily support the defence mission.
The airbase’s underground complex, known as the ‘KLEK’ facility, could house as many as 60 aircraft seeing it was 16 metres wide and 12 meters tall. Additionally, the overground territory of the airbase featured 34 external buildings, including nearby barracks as well as vehicle garages, workshops, and a radar station situated at the top of the Mount.



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