(Image: Rob Schleiffert, cc-sa-4.0)
Once part of a closed military district, Kuçovë airbase remains one of the largest military airfields in Albania despite the grounding of its ageing aircraft fleet in 2005.
(Image: Rob Schleiffert, cc-sa-4.0)
Built with Soviet assistance, the 1950s town of Kuçovë has witnessed major decline during the post-communist period despite its place at the heart of Albania’s oil industry. Kuçovë’s abandoned factories, power plants and other decaying infrastructure extend to its rundown airbase, home to over 70 corroding aircraft that are slowly rotting away.
(Image: Rob Schleiffert, cc-sa-4.0)
Google Earth reveals a spartan airfield constructed around a vast northwest-southeast runway. Near the entrance, and parked on hard standings around the base’s perimeter, are a variety of seemingly abandoned aircraft, including Nanchang CJ-6 trainers and vintage Shenyang F-6 fighters – the Chinese version of Cold War Soviet machines.
(Images: Google Earth; Rob Schleiffert, cc-sa-4.0)
At first glance it appears that the airbase has limited infrastructure. But a long taxiway heading east leads to 47 F-6 and J-2 single seat fighters parked near the mouth of an abandoned tunnel hiding a vast, subterranean hangar.
(Image: Rob Schleiffert, cc-sa-4.0)
Within the underground space, more grounded fighters endure, rusting reminders of the airfield’s past. But Kuçovë isn’t the region’s only airbase to boast vast underground tunnels. The subterranean facilities at Gjadër Airbase in Lezhe County are also used to store withdrawn military aircraft – in somewhat better condition the neglected airframes at Kuçovë.
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