Plokštinė missile base

When the United States started building underground military bases in the late 1950s, the Soviet Union felt the need to maintain its military capabilities. Therefore, in September 1960, the Soviet Union started the rapid construction of an underground military base. It was one of the first in the Soviet Union, near the village of Plokščiai in the Lithuanian SSR.

The chosen location was 160 metres (520 ft) above sea level, which meant that its missiles could reach all of the European NATO members and NATO member Turkey. In addition, the soil was easy to excavate and the local population was small. There were no bigger towns or villages nearby, just isolated houses whose inhabitants were paid 4,500 rubles to relocate.

In 1960, more than 10,000 Soviet soldiers started to secretly work in the Žemaitija National Park for over two years. The costs of construction were comparable to the costs of building a city district or a small town.[2]

The base was regarded as one of the top Soviet military secrets, only to be revealed by U.S. reconnaissance in 1978.[3] The Plokštinė nuclear missile launch site started operating around three years after it was established.

The base boasted of a network of tunnels and included four deep shafts that have a depth between 27 and 34 meters. They were covered by concrete domes that could be moved aside on rails in 30 minutes. The base could stay autonomous for 15 days, or for three hours if also hermetically sealed.[4] The surrounding electric fence was normally connected to 220 V, with a possibility to raise the voltage to 1700 V[5] in case of an alert. The active team consisted of about 300 people, most of them military guards.[5]

The base included four silos that housed R-12 Dvina missiles with nuclear warheads. These missiles were propelled using a medium-range liquid. They weighed more than 40 tonnes, including 1,500-kilogram (3,300 lb) warhead. These surface-to-surface missiles had a range of a little less than 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi). No missiles, even for tests, were launched from the base.[6] Thanks to Soviet-US agreements, launching a rocket required the near simultaneous turning of two different keys by two operators.[5]

After twelve years of operations, the site was shut down. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the site was abandoned and not maintained. It was visited by urban explorers and suffered from numerous metal thefts. After extensive reconstruction in 2012, the former base site now hosts the Cold War Museum, opening one of the four existing silos for visitors.

The missile base appears in season 5 of Person of Interest series.[7]