The secret of Tukums airfield

Padomju iznīcinātājs Tukuma lidlaukā, 1967.gads. Tukuma muzeja arhīvs.

Tukums airfield keeps a secret that no one has solved yet - is there really a nuclear missile warhead in the territory of the airfield, which is ordered there by the special service of the Russian army, I left the airfield in the 90s?

 

Each story has its own beginning - this started with a person who, for a small fee, undertook to share highly confidential information. Namely, he knows that the nuclear missile warhead has been unloaded in the territory of Tukums airfield. It is a "gift" of the special services of the Russian army, leaving the field in the 1990s. The man claimed that he had visited the endangered place with a radiation meter and the readings were unambiguous - the radiation level was elevated. But what else will happen when the shell of the nuclear warhead breaks ?!
Our source did not want his name to be revealed, so let's call her a man Sunny - because of a confused smile that might seem friendly to everyone except Sunny's father, who angrily told him not to collect the sword and not take it home; can no longer withstand such drunken misfortune!
Quite confusingly, Sunny began to say that he used to work here as a technician, but there was a part of the "deaf people" (molčuni or army secret service) in a certain part of the airfield - no one knew what they were doing there - any conversations are forbidden. Well, here, but in the early 1990s, when the Soviet army left the airfield, the Sunny Restaurant had a conversation with a high-ranking officer who was proud that a “gift” was left for Latvians - a nuclear warhead buried at a depth of 30 m; after 12 years the container in which it is located will break down and we will receive t-as-skin radiation that there will be little ... Conscience forbidden Sunny, so he passed this information to the newspaper ... Well, at least the radioactive radiation is specific thing to check, so we went to an acquaintance for a dosimeter. Unbelievable, but lucky. We drove to the airfield, and this time we stopped at the gate to the former garage area - according to the Sunny message - near the place where the bomb was stored. Where exactly it was written, he did not reveal - 150 gr of molybdenum has been added to start the nuclear warhead, but the price of molybdenum on the black market - 28,000 euros / gr! This is the Sunny opportunity to become a millionaire! The dosimeter was still silent, and our companion explained it only by measuring above the buried ball - about 300 m north of the gate. What much? In a short secret mission, I crawled the territory, and - this time the dosimeter was silent. The fenced area was not large - in its further corner there were two underground storage facilities with inscriptions on the door - "Storage No.5" and "No.4". Judging by the wooden pens, they used to store vegetables. More to the west was an impressive bunker with two hangars planted with trees and, significantly, concrete nests for machine guns in the corners of the perimeter of the area - identical to those I saw last year in Germany, the former Soviet missile base, where nuclear weapons were actually stored. So, something significant was here, but not a memory of the place where a deadly cargo was lowered to a depth of 30 m.

Something from legends and truths

Sunny said the bomb was placed in a 5 cm thick lead container, and even if we assume it weighs only 52 kg, as reported in some informal sources, considerable work still needs to be done to dig a 30 m deep shaft (not to be called a pit).
The testimonies of the surveyed Tukums residents are contradictory - some say that the Russian army did not have such equipment in the 1990s - more equipment was rented from Slokenbeck and even a lawn mower was borrowed from the local garden. But there are also people who are holy - we don't even know what was here and what opportunities the Soviet army had .... Still legends about underground tunnels - one of the former guards of the airfield (at the time when the airfield was managed by the agricultural company "Durbe") says that on the Jauntukums side, there was an indication on the runway "Do not leave the runway" (there was no such place in any other place). There have been rumors that an underground tunnel is stretching in this place. Enthusiasts have checked the place with a special measuring device, and it has really shown a void underground. Of course, there is no official approval for this version. It should be noted that the Sunny acquaintance, the owner of the dosimeter, who met later, denied the story of increased radiation at the aerodrome; there is nothing like that - at one time there were two metal tanks with radon at the airfield, and there the radiation exceeded the norm six times. While thinking about what to do with them, the gypsies have noticed to be cut into scrap metal; now, though, radiating around while walking, if still walking ... This is the story, the possible truth of which none of the state institutions is going to check at the moment.

 
Wrote down this story: Vents Dubrovskis, Ivonna Plaude
Used sources and references:

Story from the newspaper "Neatkarīgās Tukuma Ziņas"

 
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