Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · A Russian military airfield in Abkhazia, once home to Soviet Su-15 and Su-27 interceptor regiments.
A real-world airfield as described in public sources, and how sim maps represent it. Units, facilities and names change; each is dated where the sources allow, and the charts are not for navigation. Use current official publications for flight planning.
Location and identity
- Location
- Outside Gudauta in Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia, with the runway's end 60–70 m from the Black Sea shore [1] [2]
- Country or territory
- Georgia
- Coordinates
- 43.1040° N, 40.5793° E [3]
- Elevation
- 79 ft (24 m) [3]
- Identifiers
- UG0U
- Opened
- in use in the Second World War, when Black Sea Fleet bombers were based there [2]
- Theatre
- The Caucasus
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · Military
- Roles today
- Forward staging and deployments
Units
Permanently based units belong to the airfield; rotational and temporarily deployed units are there for a period or an operation. Dates are when the sources place each unit there; "as of" is when a source described it as current.
Earlier
171st Fighter Aviation Regiment, moved to Ugolny on Chukotka in October 1982 [1] [2]
- Service
- Soviet Union (until 1991), air force
- Basing
- Permanently based
- Aircraft
- La-7, MiG-15, MiG-17, Yak-28P, Su-15TM
- When
- 1950 – Oct 1982
529th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Air Defence Forces [1] [2]
- Service
- Soviet Union (until 1991), air force
- Basing
- Permanently based
- Aircraft
- Su-27
- When
- 1982–1992
345th Independent Guards Airborne Regiment, later Russia's 50th military base and then the 10th Independent Peacekeeping Airborne Regiment [1]
- Service
- Russia, army
- Basing
- Permanently based
- When
- ended, dates not given
Runways and facilities
The sources do not date these figures. Facilities not listed here are not documented in the sources cited, which does not mean the airfield lacks them.
| Runway | Length | Width | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15/33 [2] [3]3,000 m, reinforced concrete; lengthened twice, in the early 1960s and early 1970s | 9,802 ft (2,988 m) | 164 ft (50 m) | concrete |
- Arresting gear
- None documented in the sources cited
- Navaids
- None documented in the sources cited
Figure 1 — Airfield map of Gudauta (Bombora) Air Base (to scale)
- Runway
- Taxiway
- Apron
- Helipad
- Airfield boundary
Runways, taxiways, aprons and buildings inside the airfield boundary, true north up, drawn from OpenStreetMap data retrieved 2026-10-28. Widths come from the map data or, where it gives none, a typical 45 m runway and 18 m taxiway. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the ODbL 1.0. Community-mapped, not an official aerodrome chart, and not for navigation.
Sim maps
Represented in: DCS: Caucasus
DCS: Caucasus DCS World · Present day
Represented as “Gudauta” · checked 2026-10-28 [4]
Only the maps marked represented or confirmed absent have been checked. Any other map may or may not represent this airfield.
Role today
Bombora, outside Gudauta in Abkhazia, is a Russian military airfield, part of Russia’s 7th military base as of 2014. [2] Its 3,000 m runway can take all combat and military transport aircraft, and its sea end lies only 60–70 m from the shore, so aircraft can take off straight out over the water at very low level, where radar finds them harder to see. [2]
History
Black Sea Fleet bombers were based at the airfield in the Second World War. [2] The 171st Fighter Regiment flew from it from 1950 to October 1982, with La-7s, MiG-15s, MiG-17s, Yak-28Ps and finally Su-15TMs, before moving to Ugolny on Chukotka; the Air Defence Forces’ 529th Fighter Regiment followed from 1982 to 1992, with Su-27s in the last years of the Cold War. [1] [2] Between 1963 and 1969 it also took passenger flights to Moscow and Leningrad, with Il-18s and Tu-104s. [2]
The 345th Independent Guards Airborne Regiment was later based at the airfield; after the Soviet collapse it became Russia’s 50th military base and then a peacekeeping regiment. [1] At the 1999 OSCE Istanbul summit Russia agreed to close the base and withdraw, but Abkhaz authorities block OSCE inspection visits and no date for withdrawal has been set. [1]
The airfield
A single concrete runway, 15/33, 3,000 m long, lengthened twice, in the early 1960s and the early 1970s. [2] [3]
Sources
- Gudauta. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudauta (accessed 2026-10-28). Town article, section Air base, citing M. Holm's ww2.dk regiment pages and Feskov et al., The Soviet Army in the Years of the Cold War (2004).
- Бамбоура (аэропорт) (Bamboura airport). Russian Wikipedia (secondary source, in Russian). https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Бамбоура_(аэропорт) (accessed 2026-10-28). Description, runway, history of the regiments and the 2014 status.
- Airport and runway data, UG0U. OurAirports open data (public domain, community-maintained). https://davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data/airports.csv (accessed 2026-10-28). Rows for UG0U Gudauta Air Base in airports.csv and runways.csv.
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Caucasus airbases (Gudauta.json). dcs-world-schema, open-source data extracted by running DCS World 2.9.30.28536. https://github.com/YoloWingPixie/dcs-world-schema/blob/c3091e6c08fb8167e26145d0e33c10e4140c6fe7/dcs-world-reference/latest/airbases/Caucasus/Gudauta.json (accessed 2026-10-28). With its beacon and navaid files, as tabled on the DCS: Caucasus map page.
Wikipedia articles are secondary sources and can change; they are cited with the date they were read. FAA airport data and diagrams are official but are reissued every 28 or 56 days; each is cited with the edition read. pydcs mirrors the DCS terrain data at the commit linked.