Historical Abandoned Military Bases Around the World
Zeljava Airbase, Croatia/Bosnia and Herzegovina
Officially known as Objekat 505, Zeljava Air Base borders Bosnia and Croatia and was Yugoslavia’s largest underground air base. It was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s and its construction was shrouded in secrecy. The underground base had four jet sized exits, could be hermetically sealed, and was designed to withstand a direct nuclear hit. Objekat 505 was meant to protect against foreign aggressors but failed to consider the possibility of issues at home. During the Yugoslavian civil war, the Yugoslavian army destroyed the base so as to disable its use by any of the factions involved in the war. The demolition was continued and completed a year later and over 50 tons of explosives were detonated. Presently, the Bosnian Federation police force use the site as a K-9 training facility for explosive retrieval due to the large amount of undetonated explosives left over from its heyday.