Slavuta Missile Base

In 1959 the USSR established the 615^th Guards Engineer Regiment, based just outside of Slavuta.  Slavuta is a town about 15 miles east of Ostrog.  In the 19^th Century, Slavuta was one of the larger towns in the Ostrog area and may have been well known to my Ratzlaff ancestors as well as the other Mennonites living in the German villages of the Karolswalde Circuit.  In 1960, the regiment was renamed the 615^th Guards Missile Regiment and became attached to the 37^th Guards Missile Division based in Lutsk, Volhynia (60 miles to the NW of Ostrog), itself a division of the 43^rd Red Banner Missile Army.  The 43^rd was an army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces which controlled the USSR’s land based inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43rd_Rocket_Army

The 615^th consisted of two battalions, each with 4 R-12 (SS-4) pads.  The first battalion went on alert duty in 1961 and the second in 1964.  Both battalions were stood down in February of 1984.  Alternate sources indicate that the 615^th was equipped with R-5M missiles (instead of R-12 missiles).  The Slavuta site appears to have been the third location in the Soviet Union to be equipped with nuclear missiles and the R-5M was the first Soviet missile to be armed with a nuclear warhead.  From 1960-1984, NATO designated these launch sites as the“Ostrog MRBM (medium range ballistic missile) Complex”, with launch sites 1 and 2.  Two alternative launch sites were set up at Slavuta and Shepetovka (25 miles to the SE).

In 1985, the 615^th went on alert duty equipped with 9 RSD-10 Pioneer-UTTKh (known to NATO as SS-20) missiles.    In 1988, the USSR deployed 405 RSD-10 missiles throughout the country, including those manned by the 615^th.  This regiment was stood down in 1991 and disbanded.  In 2005, a paper published by the Bonn International Center for Conversion regarding ex-Soviet weapons housed at Ukrainian sites, claimed that there were still 20,000 tons of ammunition kept at the Slavuta sites.

http://www.bicc.de/uploads/tx_bicctools/paper41.pdf

These sites, located in the Ostrog Forest, are in positions that were in or very near Ostrog Powiat in the 19^th Century.  The first site sat just northeast of Bilotyn, and the second between Khorovytsia and Komyny.  In addition to these two sites, additional barracks and a railroad depot were located on the southwest side of the town of Slavuta.

The ruins of these sites can be seen today on Google satellite views.  At the first site, remains can be seen of workshops, barracks, mess-halls, stores, parade grounds, a gym, a firehouse, and a shooting range, as well as numerous warehouses.  At the second site, similarly, ruins of barracks, warehouses, and hangars can be seen.  

For more information see:

http://www.astronautix.com/fam/irbmbase.htm

http://www.ww2.dk/new/rvsn/615gvmr.htm

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=50.2792191&lon=26.6899823&z=14&l=0&m=b