Cave Battery

Cave Battery, also known as Battery No. 367, is an unfinished coastal artillery fortification on Russky Island within the Vladivostok city district of Primorsky Krai. It stands about 800 meters north of the base of Cape Vyatlin: roughly 700 meters from the Voroshilov Battery and about 1.6 kilometers from Cape Schmidt. It was designed as a turreted battery with four 305-millimeter guns — one of the most powerful coastal defense structures planned for Vladivostok, but it was never completed.

History

The project was approved in 1914, as part of strengthening the defenses of the city and the Eastern Bosphorus strait. Its engineering design differed from Western coastal-artillery counterparts: powder and shell magazines were not built as separate casemates but cut directly into the rock beneath the planned gun turrets and linked by a network of corridors. These rock-cut chambers gave the structure its popular name, Cave Battery. Construction went on for three years and stopped in 1917 along with the general wind-down of fortress works after the revolution. The site was left unfinished and never formally became part of the Vladivostok Fortress, unlike the nearby Voroshilov Battery, which was put into service already in Soviet times. The finished underground chambers were not abandoned entirely, though: they were later used as an ammunition store for the Voroshilov Battery's guns.

Today

Today Cave Battery is abandoned and has no military use. What remains is a labyrinth of underground corridors and casemates cut into the rock of Russky Island, without the gun turrets that were never installed. The site draws explorers and anyone interested in the military history of Russky Island and the Vladivostok Fortress in general, alongside the nearby Voroshilov Battery, which now houses a museum.

Getting there

An asphalt road leads to the battery and ends in a dead end; from there you need to turn around and drive back to the first turn onto the dirt track leading to the site. A landmark along the way is a distinctive rock that from a distance looks like an abandoned house with a chimney.