Poduzhemye

64°55'12"N 034°15'58"E

runway: 10/28 - 2500x50m/8202x160ft - concrete

Poduzhemye airbase (russian: Авиабаза Подужемье , better known in Russia as Kem air base or Kem/Uzhmana, russian: Кемь Авиабаза) was an airfield 600 kilometers north-northeast of St. Petersburg.
The airfield already existed during the war with Finland in 1940.
I was unable to trace which units used the airfield at the time however.


No photos of the active airfield have been located


During the Cold War the airfield was an interceptor field.
It featured a long runway and platforms, and had a logistics site 4-5 kilometers and a domestic site 6 kilometers to the east.
In 1978 it was used by Su-15TMs of 265 IAP to intercept and shoot down Korean Air 902, a Boeing 707, after having been shot at 40 minutes prior by Su-15TMs from Afrikanda.
The aircraft, flying from Europe to Korea via the North Pole had made a navigation error and ended up over the Soviet Union.
Although two passengers died during the attack and some were injured, the majority of the people on board were saved by an emergency landing on a nearby frozen lake.





The Korean Airlines Boeing 707 on the bank of the lake after the ice had melted (photo via colonel-baranez.livejournal.com, in Russian)


265 IAP continued to fly the Su-15 at a high state of readiness until the summer of 1994.
In June 1994 the Regiment was ordered to fly the aircraft to Rzhev, where they were disbanded.
Most of its pilots, engineers and technicians were forced to resign.
The successor of the Soviet Union, Russia, could no longer afford to keep its large air force.
The airfield remained in a near-operational state until 1999.
Today the airfield lies abandoned.
Weeds and grasses are growing in the cracks between the concrete plates the airfield was built with.
A lone Su-15 could still be found on a pole at the domestic site in 2010.




Su-15 'Flagon' on a pole on the domestic site in 2010, appropriately adourned with bort number 'red 265'
(View on Yandex.Fotki - Посмотреть на Яндекс.Фотках).





Shot along the runway in 2009.





Poduzhemye air base in 2005 (Google Earth)