Estonia, Paldiski naval-base
A friend of us knows that we are interested in bunkers. When he was for business in Estonia, in the place Paldiski, he went guided by a local business partner looking for bunkers in the area, he found a huge tower and some barracks around it.
Everything was at that time still covered with snow, what mend that is was very dangerous to walk at the location because there were so many holes in the ground and it was hard to recognise what he was taking pictures of.
Here by we will thanks my friend Jan van E. for making these pictures and allowing us to publish them on our website.
After WW2 the Russian army took over the place and the surrounding, they made a base of 650 hectares. It was a so called “forbidden city” especially for foreigners. Near Paldiski was the educational and training centre for nuclear Soviet submariners until 1995. When the Russians left Estonia in the late nineties they left the reactor shutdown behind, and they handed the base over to Estonia officials. Historically, the Paldiski Peninsula housed three military units of the former Soviet Union: No. 10717 of the Navy, No. 03115 of the Missile Forces, No. 2198 of the Coast Guard.
We found a website where they had information about the military history of Paldiski, www.melkon.lv and it was luckily in English. After sending an email to the authors of this website we received more specific information about this location.
We will also thank Yury Melkonov for providing us with information about Paldiski and its military background.
This location was the Command post of a Soviet Coastal artillery battery, the battery included two railway guns of 356mm (TM-1-14), this was the biggest coastal battery of the Soviet Baltic Fleet.
This tower was build by the Soviet Navy in 1953-55, in the tower were two optical systems placed: one for range definition and the second one for direction definition (azimuth).
Types:
1x Fire control post
3x barracks
