K. Meškauskas' memories of the Plungė district missile bases

Memoirist Eugenijus Bunka met Kaunas resident Kajetanas Meškauskas completely by chance, but his memories of the construction of the Plokštinė missile base became a real treasure in filling the holes in history related to this military facility.

After graduating from Kaunas Medical Institute in 1959, Kajetonas Meškauskas did not want to join the only party at that time and soon received a draft to the army. Not for the three years of mandatory service, but an appointment to work for life. From the first day, he was assigned to a military construction unit, which he soon established in the Šateikiai forests of the Plungė district. A ground-based missile launch site was being built here, and an underground one in Plokštine near Lake Plateliai. In 1960, four military construction battalions were formed. Each had four companies, and each company had 125 construction workers. Although the Plateliai residents tell their guests that, in order to keep the secret, they did not take a single Lithuanian into the construction units, Kajetonas Meškauskas knows very well that it was the other way around. At the beginning, only Lithuanians served in one battalion, Estonians in another, and Latvians in the third, and they were recruited into the road construction battalion regardless of nationality; it was important that there was a driver, tractor operator, or excavator operator.

Another legend is about why construction structures and base equipment were transported to Plokštinė only at night. A “scooter” would drive ahead of the column, from which soldiers would jump out and chase late passers-by or onlookers away from the windows so that they would not see the cargo. In fact, according to K. Meškauskas, rocket fuel was transported at night. Due to the increased pressure in the tanks, its poisonous vapors would seep through the safety valves, which is why the fuel was transported at a time when there were no people on the roadside. For the same reason, the soldiers would chase everyone away from the road, and they would tell the residents of the houses along the road not to go near the windows and to close them.

Šateikiai railway station was closed to passenger trains during construction and turned into a loading yard for construction structures and military equipment. Powerful MAZ tractors, which had been in service for only a year, transported heavy loads northwest of the station - to Šateikiai forests and east - to Plokštinės forest on the eastern shore of Lake Plateliai.

Hangars for mobile missiles were built in the fields, their launch pads were concreted and painted green, and the bushes and trees that camouflaged them grew in special pots. If necessary, they could be quickly moved aside.

Despite all the security measures, as soon as work began in Šateikiai, the Voice of America immediately reported on the construction of the base, telling in detail about the technical characteristics of the missiles and the future equipment of the site. As K. Meškauskas said, military counterintelligence resorted to investigating. At first, they took up the local pastor and his entourage, but it soon turned out that the wife of the construction unit commander was bragging to the local women about her husband and what he was doing here. The words easily reached the person who needed the information.

The base in Šateikiai was built quickly, but in Plokštine, the construction workers worked until 1962. One battalion rented residential houses for officers in Plungė, later a barracks town in the forest, and the other two worked at the missile launch site.

While digging shafts at the Plokštinė missile base, the pits were flooded with water. Water was rushing through the sand into the dug pit 12 meters in diameter. Then it was decided to undertake a unique job. A cover was poured in the future shaft, and about twenty mobile compressors were brought in, which maintained a pressure of two atmospheres in the cavity under the cover. The water stopped flowing. Five soldiers and their supervisor would climb into the pit through a special chamber. The excavated sand was lifted to the top through a special sluice. Sometimes Kajetonas Meškauskas also had to visit the pit. The soldiers would work for three and a half hours, and would spend two hours in the chamber getting used to the pressure before and after work. According to the doctor, there would be some clever people who would try to open the tap more after the shift inside the chamber so that the pressure would decrease faster and they could climb out. However, the paramedic on duty sitting outside would immediately turn off the tap, because nitrogen bubbles formed in the blood at higher than normal pressure could clog the blood vessels.

Until now, visitors were told that the 4 shafts were built in 8 months, but K. Meškauskas clarified that the soldiers dug the first one alone for a year. The doctor does not know when the construction was completed, because he was transferred to another unit.

K. Meškauskas remembers that the diameter of the pit for the shafts was originally 12 meters, and the depth was about 30 meters. Now the shafts are 6 meters in diameter, 27 meters deep. The bottom and walls have three meters of concrete and metal.

According to the construction project, gravel for road construction and repair had to be transported from a quarry near Kartena - almost fifty kilometers. The chief engineer of the road construction company, Captain Motiejūnas, looked around the area and found excellent gravel in Stirbaičiai, just outside Plateliai towards Gintališkė. The distance to the road under construction was about five times shorter than to Kartena. The local authorities did not dare to oppose the military, so the excavators rushed closer to Plokštīne.

However, Russian negligence put a foot in. From the army headquarters, the flag of the winners of the socialist race arrived for the builders of Plokštīne, followed by inspectors. It turned out that, according to K. Meškauskas, the drunken commander of the mechanization company, Captain Kapelka, had not written off the excess fuel. Kapelka happily entertained the inspectors for a week and treated them well until he covered up his mistake. After her, they distributed fuel left and right, but mostly poured it directly into the ditches.