Onega Andozero

63°55'24"N 038°24'42"E

runway: 12/30 - 3500x80m/11483x164feet - concrete

Onega Andozero air field (russian: Онега Андозеро, in Russia better known as Vatega Air Base or Ватега авиабазы) was a military airfield 600 kilometers south-southwest of Murmansk.
The airfield was built over a period of 10 years from the mid-to-late 1980s. It was designed to serve as a heavy bomber airfield. Some Russian sources claim the airfield was also intended to serve as an alternate landing site for the Soviet 'Buran' space shuttle. One of its facilities was to serve as the base operations center.
The airfield was built to the best standards, even of those today. Only one aircraft evere landed at it, though. When the airfield was 90% complete the Russian High Command decided the airfield would no longer be needed. The entire property was abandoned in 1995.


Usually Soviet maps did not display military infrastructure (sanatatur.ru).

After the military left the entire airfield was stripped of anything worth money. Given the state of the Russian economy at the time, there was no money to pay anybody to guard the place. The buildings were stripped bare until only brick remained. Even the concrete plates from the runway were not safe. Large sections of runway were illegally torn from the ground and transported elsewhere. Millions worth of building materials were sold, several millions more worth was the damage caused by the illegal demolishers. Around 2004 some of the guilty parties were sued and sent to prison or forced to pay heavy fines.
Today only the aircraft parking, taxitrack and the operations building still exist. The parking and taxitrack survived because they were made of asphalt. The operations building is a skeleton only.


Undated, but believed to be pre-2000 photo of the airfield (Google Earth).


A Mitsubishi 4x4 provides scale to the runway in August 2008 (Expedition_WhiteSea).


What remained of the operations building in 2008 (Expedition_WhiteSea).


The asphalt platform still existed in 2010 when it was used to store logs (geocaching.su).