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Secret Yugoslavian Space Program - Željava Airbase
We were in secret underground tunnels - the Secret Space Program of Yugoslavia, bellow I bring you a historical story or should I say a drama related to this creepy place. At the bottom of the page you can see what this place looks like today, and how you can visit it too.
According to the filmmaker Žiga Virc and his documentary “Huston we have a problem” - during the Cold War Yugoslavia developed a secret space program. That program made Yugoslavia the third player in the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
According to the documentary, the origins of the Yugoslav space programme lay in the writings and work of Herman Potočnik, whose 1929 book Problem Vožnje po Vesolju (The Problem of Space Travel) inspired former Nazi and architect of the American space program Wernher von Braun.
What America did not get their hands on were other writings and drawings by Potočnik, and these were found by Yugoslavian president Tito's secret service in 1947, and those documents played an important part in the Yugoslav space programme, which was started in 1948. Tito built the biggest secret underground space centre in Europe, and some of the American rockets were made in Yugoslavia. Tito and his wife were regular visitors at NASA's facilities. The secret base of Yugoslavia is built at Željava village on the Croatian-Bosnian border, project is also known as Army Base 505.
Yugoslavian president Tito then sells the program to the John F. Kennedys administration in the U.S. in return for $2.5 billion dollars (a value of about $50 billion today) in "overseas aid" which boosts Yugoslav's economy. When the imported technology fails to deliver its promised results for the NASA's planned Moon landing, an angry U.S. applies pressure to Tito, including financial blackmail and threats of military action, culminating in a secret CIA plot that triggers the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia.
If you haven’t, we highly recommend you to watch the documentary “Huston we have a problem”. In the video below you can see how the secret underground Željava airbase looks like today.
