Airfield ZELJAVA
Monument to the human's ingenuity (...and stupidity)
Airfield now Pljesevica-slope
Memory to
Robert and Nenad
FBook1 Fbook2 exYU AIR FORCE equip.     LYBI dioramas  
We from LYBI group of enthusiastic researchers from these website have a special honor to present a series of photo-documents which show very beginning of operations of this AFB complex. This is a real rarity from 1968., 1969. and in 1970., which we haven't encountered anywhere during many years of reashrces. We got an exclusive license for public presentation of these materials for educational purposes.
Used photos are the property of
Croatian State Archives (CSA) from the Collection of photos of 5th Army District HR HDA 1211.
On these photographs can be seen brand new AFB Željava-Bihać...more detailed description here.

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ExAFB Željava-Bihac i objekt KLEK nekad i sada


Exclusive!!...thanks to EX_Fishbed No.101 and some other peoples we can see the unseen photo-video footage from operational time of the airfield Zeljava.
Airbase Zeljava, early years ~1970
Santa Claus on the airfield Zeljava 1990-1991

Airbase Zeljava-daylight landing practice (08.02.1989.)

AFB Zeljava-weather reconnaissance 1991(1/2)
AFB Zeljava-weather reconnaissance 1991(2/2)
Inside the underground facility KLEK of the AFB Zeljava (1989)
 
Underground facility KLEK of the AFB Zeljava (1989)
 


exAFB Zeljava, authentical photo-video footage 1991-2008-2009
Flying at the exAFB Zeljava (1991)

Reconnaissance flight from AFB Zeljava before target practice (1989)

Flying with trike on the AFB Zeljava (1990)  


Inside the underground facility KLEK of the exAFB Zeljava (1989) 



 Target practice by squadrons from the exAFB Zeljava (1989)

LYBI team on location video (2009)
Zeljava RC AirShow 2009 part 1
Inside the underground facility KLEK of the exAFB Željava (2009)

Zeljava RC AirShow 2009 part 2




ZELJAVA-GENERAL
Page set on 17.09.2006.
Last time updated 06.04.2015.

For schema in full resolution click here or scheme itself

>
External disposition of the objects
The structure of YPA units who were placed here.

Let's fly with 125th.Fighting SQDN!
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Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Let's climb on the control tower with the LupusREBEL

HR(CRO) vision of arfield Zeljava


Let's drive through the runways and aprons !


Dragoslav Sobotka
(designer of the airfield Zeljava)

Personal pictures of Canadian soldiers on the AF Zaljava and mt.Gola...thanks to J...more pic!

Cross section of a main gallerys in the underground object "KLEK".
Gallerys:
125th.Fight.SQDN
124th.Fight.SQDN


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Important notice for all who have plane to visit AF Zeljava!
This is the view of AF Zeljava area by CMAC (Croatian Mine Action Centre)
...seriously consider these informations if You have a plan to visit AF Zeljava!
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If You decide to go inside the tunnels of the "Klek" facility (underground part of tha AF Zeljava) please be very careful because on certain places from the ceeling hangs very big concrete pieces only on the armature iron.
Also, some parts of the tunnels is in the very poor condition and at risk of collapsing!

Most critical parts are:
-center of the "Star" (position 38 on the schema, danger of collapsing, dust)
-big ceiling crack in the tunnel that leads to exit 4 (position 50 on the schema, danger of collapsing)
-entrance 1 (on the ceiling hangs large pieces of the concrete on the armature iron)
-lower elevator station who lead to the control tower

It also would be important to protect the respiratory organs because of the known PCB compounds pollution through the dust.
Also unknown is the fate of ionization smoke detectors, hundreds of them were placed on the tunnels ceilings.
Those in normal use are not dangerous, but if their casing are broken then radioactive component of americium-241 can be free and easily absorbed in the lungs...that can cause cancer and genetic damage in extreme cases.
 
A t t e n t i o n !

With destroying of this airfield great ecological damage has been done. This survey here shows that on Zeljava airfield has been detected high concetration of a chemichal compaunds polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), especialy in the tunnel 1 where that concetration is 164ppm(parts per milion).
Here is some more data about PCB compaunds (non-englsih).


Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) in Zeljava
Toxicological situation in facility today (2008)(non-english)
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Schematic display of underground water connections around mountain Pljesevica:

Survey results of connections displayed on chart left:
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Whole document, from which was taken this 2 part's, you can download from here (on english).

Magazin "Voda i mi "(Water and us), nr.43/2005, pages 44-50 include this article
"War waste and soil pollution of karst areas in Bosnia and Hezegoovina with polychlorinated biphenyls" you can download from here (non-english).

 
     
(thank's Hombre for upper 2 pictures)...
 

26.may.1992.-Part of phone talk between Fikret Abdic and Ratko Mladic related to the destruction of the airfield Zeljava.
This part you can download from here.
Whole phone talk is here...under "(26-05-1992) Ratko Mladic - Fikret Abdic)", and transcript on english is here.
   
On this web site, starting from this one;
http://www.domovina.net/archive/1991_05.php
...exists about 20 hours secret recorded phone talks between Slobodan Milosevic-Radovan Karadzic-YPA officers-various politicians, and through them is pretty clearly visible nature of war(s) in exYugoslavia, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

All phone talks were recorded between;
may.1991.-may.1992., and transcripts (on English and Croatian) are also available.
   
       

Fikret Abdic:

And then we, down in Bihac, maintained superb relations.
Ratko Mladic:  Yes?
Fikret Abdic: Um … good and at the end all these people of the moderate orientation who were there when the airport was bombarded, runways blown up, then we were all personally mined.  I mean, then you see…
 
Ratko Mladic:  Let me tell you, I don’t know who mined the airport.  I wasn’t there at the time.
 
Fikret Abdic:  Yes?
Ratko Mladic:  And I have no cl…
Fikret Abdic:  Military helicopters were there.
Ratko Mladic:  But…
Fikret Abdic:  I’ve told Panic everything about it.
Ratko Mladic:  But neither did I … we too didn’t believe … neither did I believe this could happen to us, this hell.
 
Fikret Abdic: Yeah?
Ratko Mladic:  We couldn’t imagine people would attack us in the barracks who used to celebrate with us … called us their army, whose army we were, built together, and were suddenly blocked, surrounded by wire, trucks, barricades, snipers…
 
Fikret Abdic: Yes, yes, but it is about a development which isn’t…
Ratko Mladic:  Yes?
Fikret Abdic: You have to be self-critical about this.
Ratko Mladic:  Yes, self-critical, but we are the least guilty for this.

 

 
Radio beacom for a runway approach (ICAO classified) on AF Zeljava:
RA305kHz (Rakovica)
VA420kHz (Vaganac)
IZ320kHz (Izacic)
KL320kHz (Klokot)
BI420kHz (Bihac?)

ICAO chart of lower airspace for exYugoslavia

(situation in 1985.year)

ICAO chart of upper airspace for exYugoslavia

(sitaution in 1985.year)

Thanks to the people, who continue to send me new data about all this, foto-video updates keep going on!...thanks once more!

*tekstual data in videos has been collected from numerous sides, mostly web-forums, articles and similar on that subject, it is possible that some unintentional errors exists.

 


MISECLLANEOUS
 
Price list of the AF Zeljava kitchen...more artifacts here.
 
 
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Bikers at the AF Zeljava and Gola peak  
   

p.s:
If anyone have some unseen photo-video documents about airfield Zeljava and mt.Gola than those people can contact us on the FORUM and than we will put those materials on this web site.
Here especialy we think on the members of UN-troops (IFOR, SFOR,...etc.) who has been deployed around here through the time.
One of those people is J whose pic i puted here.

Izjava za zainteresiranu javnost na hrvatskom jeziku<---->Public announcement for all visitors of this web page.