The Aeronautical Museum of Belgrade

With a few parallels in aviation history, especially in the years immediately following WWII, former Yugoslavia benefited from supplies by a great number of countries. As a matter of fact, the air force of this newborn communist republic was formed at first from leftovers of retreating Germany and conquering Britain, followed by the establishment of a supply line initially from the USSR, and later the US and again Britain.

The special political ability of marshal Tito, who ruled uncontested as a communist dictator since the foundation of Yugoslavia in 1945 until his death in 1980, and the credit he benefited from especially in Britain, allowed him to keep out of the sphere of influence of the USSR since 1948. In a strategic position on the border with NATO countries like Italy and Greece, Tito adopted a detente policy of ‘equal-distance’ between the two opposing blocs over the Cold War period (even though NATO did not trust him fully, as testified by the deployment of a SAM defense line in northeastern Italy, see this post).

Of course, most of the military supply was of Soviet make, especially after the death of Stalin and well until the end of communism in Europe and the bloody fragmentation of the Yugoslav state. However, concerning civil aviation, autonomy from Moscow allowed the adoption of western aircraft, like the French Aerospatiale Caravelle and much of the Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas inventory, in the major national airline JAT – something which happened very rarely anywhere in the communist bloc over the years of the Cold War, another notable instance being Romania, again a ‘semi-autonomous’ communist dictatorship, who refused the Soviet Tupolev Tu-134 in favor of license-built British BAC 1-11s.

Another effect of the autonomy from the USSR was the creation of a national aviation industry, which especially in the case of SOKO, produced military trainers and light attack aircraft of good success, which despite ageing, are still flying today.

More recently, the fierce conflicts raging over the Balkans in the 1990s have created a major active front for modern aviation, where the air force of Serbia – which inherited the geographically central part of Yugoslavia and its capital city, Belgrade – confronted the NATO alliance in an open conflict. The unbalance of forces allowed the western coalition to quickly establish air superiority, which did not come without a few notable material losses however.

A rich display of this peculiar aviation history, actually tracing back to WWI and the early years of aviation, can be found in the Aeronautical Museum of Belgrade, which despite being in today’s Serbia, acts as a kind of Yugoslav Aviation Museum. As a matter of fact, it was founded as such back in the years of Tito, and opened in its current building nearby ‘Nikola Tesla’ civil airport of Belgrade in 1989, when Yugoslavia was still a reality.

This short post provides an outline of what you can find in this museum, with photographs taken on a visit in April 2019.

Sights

The museum occupies a relatively large area in the vicinity of the airport of Belgrade, and is made of an open-air exhibition, open-air storage area, and big mushroom-shaped building hosting an indoor exhibition.

The ‘gate guardian’ is a SOKO J-21 Jastreb, a nice light multi-role aircraft from the 1960s, powered by a British Rolls-Royce Viper jet engine.

Indoor exhibition

The entry hall of the mushroom-shaped building features is a good example of the architectural style from the late communist era. The ground floor hosts a small exhibition about the early days of aviation in the former region of the Balkans, with documents from WWI years. Among the items on display, you can find early pilot’s licenses from notable war pilots, likely granted after training abroad, and actually written in French.

The main hall of the museum can be found upstairs. This large can be walked on two levels. Most aircraft are to be found on the lower level, but a few are suspended to the glassy circular sidewall of the mushroom, lighted from behind by the sunlight – so that taking pictures is just a nightmare!

The centerpiece of the collection is an exemplar of the SOKO J-22 Orao, a twin-engined – two Rolls-Royce Viper turbofans – light ground-attack and trainer aircraft from the 1970s. Designed jointly by Yugoslavia and Romania, this model equipped the Yugoslav (then Serbian) air force during the 1990s, where a handful exemplars are still flying today.

Indeed a clean design with an interesting performance, this aircraft was possibly the last heir of the Ikarus-then-SOKO lineage, originated back in the years before WWII. In this respect, some unique exemplars of aircraft are preserved in this museum, witnessing the existence of a school of skilled aircraft designers in Serbia, not much known in the western world.

A key figure of the Ikarus design bureau, Dragoljub Beslin led the design of Ikarus S-451, a nice, very small, twin-prop attack aircraft flown in 1951, especially designed to sustain high load factors in maneuvers at high speed.

Another unique specimen is the twin-jet Ikarus 451M, the first jet aircraft built by Yugoslavia. Same designer as the S-451, this unusual jet-engined taildragger flew in 1952, but was soon superseded by more modern models, in those years of quick-paced development of aviation technology. Again, the engines were from the West, in the form of two French Turbomeca Palas turbojets.

Another member of the ‘Ikarus 451’ family – it must be said this Yugoslav one is likely the oddest model numbering systems ever created… –  the T 451 MM Strsljen (Hornet) features a more convincing configuration, resembling the single-engined British BAC Jet Provost and the Italian Macchi MB 326, both rather successful trainers from the late 1950s. On display is actually the ‘Strsljen II’ version, which is a attack/training version with more thrust than the first series aircraft. This model was conceived to operate from unprepared runways, and featured two Turbomeca Marbore II French turbojets. The aircraft flew in 1958, but an air force contract was not granted.

Some functional wind tunnel models of other aircraft, actually never reaching the 1:1 prototype stage, are on display. These include a rare ekranoplane design, the UTVA 754. With a mechanic-monster-like appearance like all ekranoplanes (the most famous being probably the Bertini-Beriev preserved at the Russian Air Force Museum in Monino, see here), this machine was designed in 1982 in the then-Yugoslav town of Zagreb, today the capital city of Croatia.

A medevac aircraft conceived for easy conversion between floats and wheels, the UTVA 66H can be visited also inside. The indigenous SOKO is represented by a number of models. These include the SOKO G-2 Galeb, a successful trainer/light attack aircraft from the 1950s, built around a single Rolls-Royce Viper turbofan. During its long history it was exported to several international operators, and gave birth to the more recent SOKO J-21 Jastreb. The Galeb was in service with Serbia until 1999.

Another section of the museum features aircraft of foreign make which witness the intricate history of alliances of both the pre-WWII Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the post-WWII communist Yugoslavia. Most remarkably, these include a Messerschmitt Bf-109-G! The history of this particular aircraft is not very clear, some sources stating it was captured from Bulgarian air force. As a matter of fact, Yugoslavia acquired about 70 Bf-109-E from Germany in 1940, which in turn furiously invaded from north in a quick an violent campaign in spring 1941.

Next in line is nothing less than a British Hawker Hurricane! A group of Hurricanes were acquired from Britain in the immediate pre-war years, and even license-built in Belgrade in a small number – Yugoslavia apparently purchased aircraft seamlessly from both opponents at the outbreak of WWII. Later on, Hurricane-equipped squadrons of Yugoslavia fought back on the side of the Allies from bases in southern Italy, finally regaining control over the Balkans.

In a similar fashion, a Supermarine Spitfire Mk.V witnesses the involvement of British-supplied national air force squadrons in the liberation of Yugoslavia from the German invaders.

In the closing years of WWII, Yugoslavia benefited also from the help of the USSR. This is witnessed by a massive – and pretty rare, out of former soviet republics! – Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik. This big attack aircraft, possibly the most famous Soviet aircraft of WWII, equipped three squadrons in the Yugoslav air force, and helped in the fight on the so-called ‘Srem front’ north of Belgrade. An often overlooked sector of the European front, substantial operations were carried out since late 1944 until April 1945, with the forces of Nazi Germany slowly retreating under the offensive of the Red Army (including Bulgarian divisions) and of Yugoslavia from the south. These operations involved 250’000 troops on either side, thus engaging the Germans and draining resources from mainland defense. At that time, an entire division of the Yugoslav air force were equipped with this aircraft type, kept in service until the 1950s.

Similarly, an elegant WWII Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter of Soviet make can be found nearby in the colors of Yugoslavia.

After the end of WWII, Tito was determined not to surrender his political and economic independence to Stalin. In this high-stake gamble, he made no secret of his thoughts, and sought international recognition from the west. As expected, Stalin showed no sense of humor in that matter, and as the USSR broke relationships with Yugoslavia, this country faced the risk of isolation and of Soviet invasion in the early stage of the Cold War (late 1940s).

Over the years, the good relationship established with the western Allies during WWII were strengthened further, and most incredibly for a communist country, the US provided aircraft and helicopters, in the form of Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, Republic F-84G Thunderjet and (much later, in the early 1960s) North American F-86D ‘long-nosed’ Sabre.

The years of Kennedy administration saw a significant improvement of the relationship between Tito and Khrushchev, and this led to a switch to Soviet aircraft in the form of the supersonic MiG-21, which equipped the Yugoslav air force in substantial numbers over the following two decades. An exemplar of this iconic and ubiquitous aircraft, an unquestionably well-performing aircraft in his age, is preserved in the museum. By the way, the early 1960s saw also the widespread adoption of SOKO Galeb trainers and the phase out of older British/US models.

Other peculiar exhibits in the indoor part of the museum are the wrecks resulting from air fight operations during the Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s. On the national (Yugoslav) side, the tail cone of a SOKO G-4 Super Galeb – a totally different design from the quasi-homonym G-2 – damaged by a shoulder-launched Stinger missile in 1991.

But much more material is from NATO countries, resulting from combat during operation ‘Allied Force’ against Serbia in 1999. Most notably, you can see a substantial part of the wing of a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, the famous stealth aircraft downed by a vintage Soviet SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missile in March 1999, as well as a landing gear, ejection seat, pilot’s helmet, Vulcan cannon and some smaller parts of a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon downed the following May, again due to an SA-3 missile. The first stage of the missile which hit the Nighthawk is on display too.

These are basically the only aircraft lost in action over enemy territory during that operation.

An apparently easier prey, General Atomics RQ-1 Predator UAVs were used in great numbers, some twenty of them being downed. One wrecked example is put on display.

More items of the kind include parts of NATO missiles, including HARM anti-radiation missiles and cluster-bombs containers.

On the upper level, you can find a mostly photographic exhibition mainly about the national carrier JAT. Interestingly, not a single Soviet-made model appears in the pictures, whereas you can find Boeing 707s, 727s, 737s, Douglas DC-9s, McDonnell-Douglas DC-10s, Aerospatiale Caravelles and ATR-42/72s – clearly a strong commercial bound with the West, pretty unusual for a communist country!

Another Yugoslav airline started operations to a later date – Aviogenex. This apparently did use aircraft from the USSR, in particular Tupolev Tu-134s, later flanked by Boeing 737s. Aviogenex ceased operations much later than the end of Yugoslavia, and operated as a Serbian company for some years.

One of the most iconic brutalist monstrosities in northern Belgrade is the skyscraper which used to host the headquarters of this airline – it looks like a good setting for some ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘Judge Dredd’ movie…

Some more panels include descriptions of airport history and modern operations in the nearby airport of Belgrade. The history line of the national aviation industry is also presented in detail through historical pictures.

Some more aircraft can be found on this level, as well as a SA-3 Goa missile in a non-operative paint scheme, likely for training or telemetry tuning purposes.

Outdoor exhibition

The large area around the building is split between a small outdoor exhibition prepared for the public, and a larger storage area with many more aircraft which can not be neared nor walked around.

The displayed aircraft include an Aerospatiale Caravelle in the colors of JAT. This exemplar was one of three operated by this airline, and was active between 1963 and 1976.

A much elder transport, a German (French license-built) Junkers 52 with P&W engines represents a fleet of four such aircraft operated by the Yugoslav air force, complementing another group of originally German aircraft captured during the war.

An aircraft of historical significance is an Ilyushin Il-14 twin-prop transport. This aircraft was a personal goodwill gift from Khrushchev to marshal Tito, and the founding member of Yugoslav presidential fleet.

A couple of Lisunov Li-2 and some original Douglas C-47 Skytrain, of which the former is a license-built Soviet version, are on display, albeit not all complete. A MiG-21 Fishbed and a Kamov twin-rotor helicopter are also on display.

Another extremely rare item from the post-WWII years, a Short SA.6 Sealand amphibious aircraft of British make has made its way to Belgrade, after years as a transport aircraft in the Yugoslav air force.

The non-visible part of the museum features a rather impressive collection of MiG-21 in several versions, SOKO J-21 Jastreb and SOKO J-20 Kraguj in a large number, a SA-2 Guideline soviet-made SAM launcher with two missiles, and a number of partly assembled aircraft and wrecks.

A mystery item is a part of an allegedly US aircraft, apparently a part of the tail empennage of a bigger transport – any suggestion about this item welcome!

Visiting

The museum is located to the northwest of the airport of Belgrade. It can be easily reached by car from the access road going to the main terminal area. Website with info in English here. Parking ahead of the entrance.

The museum can be visited in about 2 hours by an interested subject, much less if you have just a mild interest in aviation. Much paneling is in double Serbian and English language, allowing to get the most from your visit.

Despite being fully operative, the place has a somewhat rotting appearance especially from the outside, as mostly typical to former state-run institutions in former Yugoslavia. Furthermore, some form of protection for the aircraft in the outside exhibition is hopefully to be considered by the management, otherwise the aircraft with literally disintegrate to the action of the elements in a matter of some years.

Forst Zinna – A Soviet Ghost Base in Germany

The area of Jüterbog, about one hour driving south of downtown Berlin, boasts a long military tradition since well before the Cold War. Yet the most astonishing density of military installations in this region was reached in the years of the Third Reich, and later in the decades of Soviet occupation, lasting until the early 1990s.

Many chapters of this website are devoted to the subject of Soviet occupation in the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), with portraits of many military bases over its former territory (see for instance this chapter, and links therein). These either belonged to the NVA, the armed forces of the GDR, or the Red Army of the Soviet Union, which retained a significant military presence in the GDR all along the Cold War, despite this country being formally independent.

This chapter deals with one of such military bases, Forst Zinna. This base stands out in the East German panoram, due to the intriguing history of the place on one side, but also thanks to the plenty of interesting sights you may find there (as of mid-2019) – whereas many other similar abandoned installations have been wiped out by local governments, sometimes to be converted into something else.

The large military base at Forst Zinna was founded at the dawn of the Third Reich in the mid-1930s, and named after the führer, Adolf Hitler. The core was constituted by a set of solid multi-storey buildings, aligned along at least four parallel rows about a third of a mile in length, built in a typical old-German style. These hosted barracks and training rooms, used by an artillery and transportation school. There were also many service buildings, like canteens, sport and administration facilities. The base was operated by the Wehrmacht until the end of WWII, when the region was conquered by the Red Army. Thanks to its design, featuring large halls and common spaces, it was selected immediately after WWII to host an academy for future German functionaries of the yet-to-be-founded GDR (or DDR, the German acronym for the GDR).

The place was decorated and refurbished reflecting the style of the new communist owners and the cultural paradigms enforced by Stalin. Just before the latter’s death, in February 1953 the academy was transferred, and Forst Zinna was handed over to the Soviet army. They further enlarged the base, adding storage areas, small farms for food production, technical buildings, plus over the years some new housing.

The end of the story is similar to many military areas in the GDR. The Soviets finally left, the bases were too many for reunified Germany in a post-Cold War scenario, so most of them were either demolished, converted or forgotten. Forst Zinna has been largely demolished, but some of the buildings, built before the end of WWII, are reportedly registered as landmarks. The whole area is sitting in the wild vegetation and is not really looked after, but much is still there and makes for a mysterious memento of past vicissitudes Germany managed to survive. To the war historian and urbex fanatic as well, Forst Zinna has really much in store.

Photographs in this post were collected during two long visits in July and August 2019.

Sights

The base occupies a roughly square area, with a side about .8 miles long. For making the description easier, its premises can be divided into four ideal sectors.

The barracks area to the southwest, where you also find an easy access to the base, is populated with the oldest buildings, erected well before WWII. These comprise living quarters, school-like buildings, canteens, administration buildings, at least one gym, a theater, an open-air movie theater, a prison, and more. There are also a couple of clearly distinguishable Soviet-built apartment buildings, much more recent and taller than their neighbors.

To the north of the base you can find a sizable area which likely hosted a huge deposit for vehicles, as well as other technical facilities. Here demolition works have stricken hard, and today only a few buildings are still in place. Yet these include what appears as a centralized power/hot water supply plant, as well as large services for the troops, which make for interesting pictures.

In the third sector to the northeast, a large U-shaped technical building hosts a unique room with Soviet memorabilia. In this area you can find also a swimming pool, a football field with nice Soviet murals, and much dumped military material. Also here demolition works must have been carried out at an early post-Soviet stage, as vegetation has already grown over the debris.

Finally, to the west of the perimeter but next to it, you can find a ghost monument from soviet times.

You can find aerial pictures of the Forst Zinna base in this chapter.

Southwestern Area – Most of the Barracks and Older Buildings

Accessing the base via the southwestern corner, you immediately meet the the first original buildings from the pre-WWII period. They are painted in a nice dark yellow.

From the pics you can appreciate the length of the blocks in this part of the base. Among other spectral items, former notice-boards for activities in the base, like the movie theater, or for the latest news.

The perimeter is marked by a concrete wall running very close to one of the rows of buildings. The walls appear decorated with didactic explanations of something technical.

Entering the buildings, you may find tons of derelict memorabilia items, including hand-written registers, book covers, etc., all in Russian. Something in no shortage in the base is surely restrooms! There are really many.

The actual function of the buildings needs to be guessed, but some must have been used as schools – or even kindergartens – at least in Soviet times, when modern housing was added to the base also for the families of the troops. This theory maybe supported by the type of decoration you sometimes find in these buildings.

Walking in some of the taller yellow buildings, likely hosting also some living areas in the years of operation, you soon perceive the style is clearly pre-Soviet – too elaborated for USSR standard, and typically German. The age of the buildings can be judged also by the heating system, based on tiled stoves fed with coal. Traces of coal can still be seen in the corridors, where the stoves were loaded!

The stairs are particularly nice in style. You are not encouraged to climb upstairs, especially in those buildings were the roof is leaking. Under the roof you can appreciate the wooden structure supporting the external tiles.

Some rooms of these buildings used to host other services, like for instance a – likely – tailor, or uniform shop, as you can see from the furniture and from the explanatory sign.

Close to the southwestern corner of the base you can find two twin apartment buildings in a typical shabby Soviet style, possibly dating to the 1970s.

The size of the apartments is incredibly small! They are apparently small one-room unities, with an extra-small kitchenette and a microscopical bathroom. On the plus side, all have a balcony on the facade.

Leftovers of the original furniture are abundant here – as you may see, everything is extremely poor quality. In some of the bathrooms you may find some stickers decorating the wall, and even traces of toilet paper holders!

The ‘Soviet ghost’ aura here is extremely intense, as everyday items can be found everywhere, like the troops had just left. In the backyard of these buildings you can find remains of a playground, broken bicycles, and even traces of hanging wires!

Just ahead of these buildings, you can see a mystery one-storey tunnel structure made of a set of progressively smaller sections – making it look like a weird ‘telescopic building’. It is clearly from a relatively late age, maybe one of the last additions to the complex.

One of the blocks adjoining the taller buildings to the south is a small (likely) elementary school, with a nice indoor gym, as well as a fenced outdoor playground. Soviet playground designers made extensive use of old tires. Here they are even painted in bright colors!

North of the school, you meet an array of smaller buildings along the perimeter of the base, but their function remains to guess.

The long rows of yellow barracks are interspersed with areas or buildings dedicated to special functions. For instance, at some point you can find a rather large open-air training area, with many types of ladders, balance axes, leapfrogs and more training rigs still in place, albeit completely surrounded by wild vegetation.

Another item is apparently a school building, with a typical academy-style front facade, and classrooms inside. By this building there is also a kind of small firefighting post (not sure), which includes a cylinder bell with a nice sound – really weird, complementing the unreal silence of this place!

There are at least two large canteen buildings. In the first you find very big kitchen rooms, with large ventilation hoods and stoves still in place.

There are also storage rooms, some with wooden trays, maybe for bread, or maybe for putting trays after lunch.

In the second canteen, even larger, you can find also remains of a Soviet decorated wall, with traces of writings and small paintings.

Other special buildings, close to one of the canteens, include a nice greenhouse.

There is also a relatively large open-air movie theater, with a covered stage and uncovered seats for the public. The benches are gone, but their legs remain. The machine room to the back is in a really bad shape.

To one side of the open-air movie theater you can find one of the strangest items in the base. It is an area severed from the others by a serious barbed-wire fence – still difficult to go through! In this kind of ‘private garden’ you can find two explanatory signs in Cyrillic, and what appear to be gym gear for fight training. There is also as a small monument – or a grave? – composed of a glass obelisk planted on a delimited area on the ground.

Even weirder, the adjoining building features very small windows… an exploration of this building allows to clarify its purpose – it used to be a prison, the small windows being on the sidewalls of the cells! There are four cells at least, with peepholes in the doors. Everything very similar in style to the Soviet prison in Karosta, Latvia, except you can’t experience the thrill of sleeping in ‘safely’ – see this post!

Not far from the fenced courtyard you can find a naive wall painting portraying two tanks transported on railway trolleys. One of the troopers has been stricken by an electric shock, as apparently his rifle touched the high-voltage cables over the railway – oh no!

There are also sport-themed murals on a fence. A building nearby looks like a garage for a small vans or for cars, maybe a mechanics shop or similar. There is also a storage room with nice wooden paneling.

The garden + prison ensemble may be interpreted as a military-police-run part of the base, likely an unwelcoming sector of the installation in its heyday! Not far you can find also an academy building with large halls, including a former gym. The vocation of the place is witnessed by a sport-themed mural.

Another special building close by the mystery quarters probably used to be a club, with a kitschy decorated room, and another gym area, with another interesting sport-themed mural. Some of the less explicitly Soviet murals may date to the years immediately after WWII, when Forst Zinna was a training academy for future key-figures of the ‘political life’ (?) of the GDR.