Ah the good old days of the Cold War. In the event you ever find yourself in Lithuania (a to me unexpectedly awesome place I hadn't thought about before), there's a most excellent Cold War museum there they made from a former Soviet missile base, sort of a 1950s era counterpart to the Pershing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plok%C5%A1tin%C4%97_missile_base
Among the interesting things was them saying how the Soviets built the place. In the West, you'd call out Haliburton or someone with dozers and heavy equipment and build a concrete fort for the missiles. The 1950s Soviet way was to bring in a division of over 10,000 soldiers and to give them shovels. All the missile silos (5 stories tall each!) and the tunnel complex were dug by hand apparently. Perhaps not the Pyramids but still pretty impressive. Don't know how useful it is but it was a much cooler to me side-trip than going to see a monastery or winery or whatever else the cruise ship offered. Tom from East Tennessee
Ah the good old days of the Cold War. In the event you ever find yourself in Lithuania (a to me unexpectedly awesome place I hadn't thought about before), there's a most excellent Cold War museum there they made from a former Soviet missile base, sort of a 1950s era counterpart to the Pershing.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plok%C5%A1tin%C4%97_missile_base
Among the interesting things was them saying how the Soviets built the place. In the West, you'd call out Haliburton or someone with dozers and heavy equipment and build a concrete fort for the missiles. The 1950s Soviet way was to bring in a division of over 10,000 soldiers and to give them shovels. All the missile silos (5 stories tall each!) and the tunnel complex were dug by hand apparently. Perhaps not the Pyramids but still pretty impressive. Don't know how useful it is but it was a much cooler to me side-trip than going to see a monastery or winery or whatever else the cruise ship offered.
Tom from East Tennessee