Baherove Air Base ( uk, Багерове авіабаза, russian: Багерово авиабаза; also transliterated as Bagarovo or Bagerovo) is an air base in Baherove,

Crimea Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a p ...

. Located 3 km northwest of the village Baherove, 14 km northwest of town of

Kerch Kerch ( uk, Керч; russian: Керчь, ; Old East Slavic: Кърчевъ; Ancient Greek: , ''Pantikápaion''; Medieval Greek: ''Bosporos''; crh, , ; tr, Kerç) is a city of regional significance on the Kerch Peninsula in the east of ...

. Airfield Baherove is "out-of-class" airport, which can accommodate aircraft of all types. From 1996 the airfield is not in use (abandoned).

History

Baherove Air Base was the 71st training ground

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an ar ...

("Polygon") that was established in the Crimean

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

of Baherove in accordance with the Resolution of the " Council of Ministers of USSR" on August 21, 1947 with the aim of aviation security for air

nuclear testing Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...

and refinement of technical means of delivering

nuclear warheads A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

, which are mainly at the time could only be used by

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot ...

. The first atomic charges were designed for

aerial bomb An aerial bomb is a type of explosive or incendiary weapon intended to travel through the air on a predictable trajectory. Engineers usually develop such bombs to be dropped from an aircraft. The use of aerial bombs is termed aerial bombing. ...

s with overall weight and

dimensions In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coord ...

characteristics allowing their use with

long-range Long Range may refer to: *Long range shooting, a collective term for shooting at such long distances that various atmospheric conditions becomes equally important as pure shooting skills *Long Range Aviation, a branch of the Soviet Air Forces * Lo ...

bomber A bomber is a military combat aircraft designed to attack ground and naval targets by dropping air-to-ground weaponry (such as bombs), launching aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploying air-launched cruise missiles. The first use of bombs dropped ...

Tu-4 The Tupolev Tu-4 (russian: Туполев Ту-4; NATO reporting name: Bull) is a piston-engined Soviet strategic bomber that served the Soviet Air Force from the late 1940s to mid-1960s. It was reverse-engineered from the American Boeing B-29 ...

. For

takeoff Takeoff is the phase of flight in which an aerospace vehicle leaves the ground and becomes airborne. For aircraft traveling vertically, this is known as liftoff. For aircraft that take off horizontally, this usually involves starting with a ...

and

landing Landing is the last part of a flight, where a flying animal, aircraft, or spacecraft returns to the ground. When the flying object returns to water, the process is called alighting, although it is commonly called "landing", "touchdown" or ...

heavy bombers Heavy bombers are bomber aircraft capable of delivering the largest payload of air-to-ground weaponry (usually bombs) and longest range (takeoff to landing) of their era. Archetypal heavy bombers have therefore usually been among the largest an ...

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt concrete, as ...

was built in Baherove Air Base with width of 100 meters (328 feet) and a length of . The runway was made from strong concrete and is still in excellent condition today. The airfield was one of the most capable of the three airstrips in

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

, which was built for the space shuttle Buran. In 1973, a branch of the

Voroshilovgrad Higher Military Aviation School of Navigators The Voroshilovgrad Higher Military Aviation School of Navigators was a flying training school of the Soviet Air Forces and later the Ukrainian Air Force. Established in 1966 in Voroshilovgrad (Lugansk), the school trained navigators until its closu ...

was opened at the airfield, which trained personnel for front-line and Army Aviation, including

navigator A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's primar ...

s. On March 30, 1977, the 228th Training Aviation Regiment of the Voroshilovgrad School was formed at the airfield (military unit 25570). The regiment was equipped with Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 fighters (1st and 2nd aviation squadrons) and L-29 training aircraft of Czechoslovak production (3rd squadron). The sea area of the former 71st range was used for training tasks in the training of anti-submarine aviation navigators (training for dropping sonar buoys from aircraft Be-12). In the late 1980s, the runway was overhauled with the creation of a surface layer of standard PAG-18 airfield concrete slabs. On January 11, 1992, the branch, together with the school, was transferred to the

Ukrainian Air Force The Ukrainian Air Force ( uk, Пові́тряні си́ли Збро́йних сил Украї́ни) is the air force of Ukraine and one of the five branches of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Its headquarters are in the city of Vinnytsia. W ...

, and in 1996 it ceased to exist. The garrison fell into neglect with the entire infrastructure. After Russia's annexation of the peninsula in 2014, the facilities of the military air base were dismantled by Russian authorities in 2016 and the air base now has ceased to exist with just two taxiways remaining partially intact.

References

External links

Unofficial home page
{{authority control Airports in Crimea Airports built in the Soviet Union Ukrainian airbases Military facilities in Crimea Soviet Air Force bases Lenine Raion