A Soviet missile base in Germany that spy planes never saw

[Gerald]

From among the trees, the sky is barely visible - which means that the glade is barely visible from the prying spy planes of the 1960s. In this clearing among the oaks, there is a concrete platform, on which there is a metal plate for the rocket launcher to be bolted down for firing at targets up to 1,200km (750 miles) away.

It was top-secret in 1959 and remains almost completely unknown to this day - the first Soviet nuclear missile base outside the USSR. But it is still there, crumbling and steadily being reclaimed by nature in the forests north of Berlin.It is still the hardest place to find. A glade down an overgrown path which seems like any other clearing in the endless woods of Brandenburg. But on its floor, there is a strip of concrete half the size of a tennis court, with a metal plate in the middle.

This is the launch-pad for a nuclear attack on Western Europe. Soviet nuclear missiles 20 times more powerful than Hiroshima were set up here, primed to be fired at targets including London and nuclear bases in eastern England.

Three years before the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet Union had already placed nuclear weapons on foreign soil - in this wood, in what was then East Germany.

There was once a garrison town for 15,000 people here, but nature has overgrown this outpost of empire. When the Red Army left in 1994, the trees moved back to reclaim the land.

Only rough forest paths now lead to the complex itself, near the village of Vogelsang.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20079147


Note: 25 October 2012 Last updated at 23:45 GMT