GKFZ Kefallonia, a now abandoned NATO base on top of a Greek island

@ElentirENG ES 8·26·2024 · 23:27 0

During the early years of the Cold War, NATO developed an impressive system of long-distance military communications.

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The purpose of this communications network was to improve the Alliance's early warning capabilities in the event of a possible attack. The system began to be developed in 1956 and was known as Allied Command Europe Highband (ACE High). At that time, communications satellites did not yet exist, so a UHF tropospheric scatter system was chosen for this network, capable of emitting signals that could be picked up beyond the horizon.

The system became operational in 1964. Dozens of communication stations were built in Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Malta, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. One of the communication stations was GKFZ Kefallonia on the island of Kefalonia, part of the Ionian Islands archipelago in western Greece. The base was set up at an altitude of over 1,000 metres above sea level, on the north-western side of Mount Ainos.

The GKFZ Kefallonia base was under the control of the Hellenic Air Force and was active until 1995, after the fall of the Berlin Wall (the ACE High system was deactivated a year later). The base was ceded by the Hellenic Air Force in 1998 for the creation of the Eudoxos Astronomical Observatory, the first robotic astronomy centre in Greece, opened in 1999. Unfortunately, the economic crisis of 2007 led to the observatory being abandoned a few years later.

Yesterday, the channel Exploring the Unbeaten Path posted an interesting video showing the former NATO base in Kefalonia. It is quite well preserved compared to other former ACE High bases that have been vandalized and dismantled:

Below you can see some screenshots from the video. In the first one we see the remote location of the base, in a mountainous area with only one access road.

An aerial view of the base from the southwest. Outside this frame is the astronomical telescope located southwest of the base, which was part of the Eudoxos Astronomical Observatory.

Below these lines we see two images of the four large satellite dishes at this base, two facing east and two facing west.

These antennas were used to communicate with other ACE High stations, creating a communications network that connected northern Norway with Cyprus and southern Turkey.