Qualla: Nokra Naval Base

Nokra Naval Base: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Uwe Dedering, CC BY-SA 4.0. On September 29, 1985, during maintenance on the nuclear submarine K-175, the reactor cores depressurized. Personnel on Nokra Island in the Red Sea had made a mistake, the emergency protection systems on both reactors were reset, and 137 people were exposed to a sudden spike in radiation. The incident was not disclosed. Radiation monitoring continued for years. The submarine eventually left. The base, a Soviet logistics point tucked into the Dahlak Archipelago off the coast of what was then Ethiopia, kept operating under the bland code 933 PMTO. This was the Cold War's Red Sea - where American signals intelligence operated out of Kagnew Station in Asmara, where Soviet submarines rotated through Nokra, and where the Eritrean liberation movement slowly closed the ring around a base whose defenders could do nothing to stop it.

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Image: Uwe Dedering | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nokra Naval Base: How the Soviets Ended Up Here

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada, CC BY 2.0. The Nokra base existed because the Soviets lost another one. In 1977, during the war between Somalia and Ethiopia, the USSR threw its support to Ethiopia. Somalia, which had hosted a Soviet naval base at Berbera since 1964, responded by giving the USSR three days to pack and leav...

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Image: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Nokra Naval Base: The PD-66 and What It Could Fix

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada, CC BY 2.0. In the first half of 1978, the Soviet floating dock PD-66 was delivered to Dahlak - an achievement that earned Captain 2nd Rank V. Vasiliev and members of the SS-21 rescue vessel crew the Order of the Red Star. The base could repair Soviet submarines operating in the Indian Ocean...

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Image: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Nokra Naval Base: The War That Found Them Anyway

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Solomatkins, CC BY 3.0. The base had been carefully positioned to avoid the war. Then the war found it. By June 1988 the worsening Eritrean civil war made submarine visits impossible - they stopped coming. The base's role shrank to servicing surface ships. Soviet warships began fighting the Eritrean nav...

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Image: Solomatkins | CC BY 3.0

Nokra Naval Base: Massawa Falls, Nokra Becomes Untenable

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Solomatkins, CC BY 3.0. In February 1990, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front stormed Massawa in Operation Fenkil, cutting Ethiopia's access to the sea. Ethiopian warships relocated to Nokra. From that point on, the base and its surrounding waters came under systematic Eritrean artillery fire from th...

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Image: Solomatkins | CC BY 3.0

Nokra Naval Base: What Sank and What Remains

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Solomatkins, CC BY 3.0. The withdrawal was not clean. On the night of February 12, 1991, the ships sailed out of the bay in sequence and formed convoy KON-63 heading north. The voyage to Aden was rough, and the uncrewed barge MBSS-219, carrying a fire engine on board, sank in the Gulf of Aden. The convo...

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Image: Solomatkins | CC BY 3.0