To the anonymous poster who said she was a sistership of the Potomac, you are correct.
This is the wreck of the US Coast guard patrol boat Hermes WPC109. She was built by the Bath Iron Works in Maine and launched February 23, 1932. She served in the Pacific during WW2 and was decommissioned in Hawaii in 1948. A decade later she was sold in Alameda CA for scrap and towed to Richmond where she was sunk as part of a breakwater.
@anonymous, there are at least two two other wrecks towards the shore from this one and I think one of them is the City of San Rafael. The lines on this just aren't consistent with a Sidewheeler. Thanks for the info and the link though. It's always nice when you can put a name to a wreck!
It could be a cable ship, but I suspect it's more likely to be a fishing factory trawler. Many times they ass those sponsons on to existing ships to increase stability and carrying capacity.
Probably undergoing maintenance. Everything needs a coat of paint once in a while.
The facility is Istres-Le Tubé Air Base near Marseille. The base is home to Mirage 2000N strike fighters and KC135 tankers, as well as serving as a storage facility for the ASMP nuclear tipped missiles for the Mirages.
The site is censored in Google and Bing, but not Yahoo.
The former liberty ship Albert M Boe was brought to Kodiak AK and planted on shore to serve as a cannery after the original building was destroyed in the earthquake.
It's a chemical plant of some ilk, plastics maybe.
After 9-11 they went crazy and censored all sorts of random stuff on GM, especially in NY. I don't think anyone hasstarted the process of un-censoring them.
Aerial photo on Wikipedia from 1996 doesn't appear to show that facility.
Whiteman is a B-2 base for the 509th bomb group and while it could be related to the special needs of that aircraft, it's location across from the baseball fields seems a bit, um, insecure. There is also a separate, secure, weapons storage area at Whiteman, which argues against it being something super secure.
Stony Brook is part of Westover AFB and was used for nuclear weapons storage and maintenance up until about the late 60's. In 1979 the entire base was handed over to the reserves. The Stony Brook portion was sold off and the nuclear weapons facilities are now owned by the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company.
Water tower, those are common in flat areas where they can't put the reservoir up in the hills, so they pump the water up into one of those and let gravity pressurize it. The facility it was attached to is now gone.
Maybe. Could also be an area of exposed black soil that is being blown in the wind. I don't see any roads or infrastructure that would suggest a well site.
There is no activity on what appears to be the military side of the airfield, but what appears to be the civil side is active. Also, the SU-21 was an interceptor and the base is located close to the East coast of Russia, so perhaps a former, but now abandoned base?
According to Google Maps that is the Nugent Sand Company, so most likely they are pumping sand slurry out of the lake and letting the water run off the pad.
Very likely is, or was, a chemical or biological warfare test range. Dugway still does agent testing and dispersal tests. Most likely the agent, whether real or simulated, is released at the south end of the range and monitors are placed at the ends of the points for cloud dispersal monitoring.
I'm going with housing development under construction. The lot shapes and sizes are consistent with new construction, and it is close to an urban center.
The facility is probably part of Fort Huachuca, which houses the Army intelligence center and the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM)/9th Army Signal Command.
They look like the crates you ship vegetables in. In Google there isn't a street view, but a Panaramio picture that shows them having plastic bags on top of the crates.
Definatly a former SAM site. The number of launchers per site would vary depending on the capabilities of the guidance radar and how many missiles we carried by each launcher. The 6 launcher type were for SA2 missiles which only had a single missile on each launcher. Not sure what type these may gave been.
I think it's the motor pool / maintenance facility for the training facility. you have a bunch of doors that look like they're for a motor pool, and a large number of storage containers around the periphery. The silo looking this is probably the base of an old fuel tank which has been removed.
The fact that there are a number of privately owned vehicles inside the perimeter argues against it being a highly secure facility.
Very secure doesn't begin to cover it. There is a further outer perimeter beyond what is seen in the original images. I don't think it's a house, the flat roof lines look more commercial to me, so almost certainly government.
Given it's proximity to a military airfield, I'm going to go with command and control facility, possibly air defense coordination center.
Fire began aboard the S.S. Grandcamp, a bulk freighter which had been loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer bound for Europe as part of the Marshall Plan. The Texas City FD responded and attempted to extinguish the fire, and when that didn't work they sealed the hatches and pumped in steal to displace the oxygen in the holds.
Two days later the ship exploded and destroyed most of the Texas City waterfront, killed the entire fire department, and set another ship loaded with...
Probably so that if they blow up they don't take half the place with them. Sometime back in the late 60's a trainload of bombs headed for Vietnam went up in a railyard and they're still finding pieces of bombs, and even some whole ones, today.
If you look to the upper right of the image you will see a silver sphere in the courtyard of a building. This is the million liter sphere, commonly known as the "8-ball" where live biological warfare agent tests were conducted on animals and human volunteers.
I recall reading somewhere that it was caused by an incompatible chemical being mistaken for ammonium nitrate and dumped onto one of the piles of AN. The two slowly reacted in the presence of water until the autoignnition temperature was reached and, well, the rest is a hole in the ground.
Hard to say what it is, but it's located only a few kilometers from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center so I would guess it might be related. There are two lines of blue railcars, many of them concealed under sheds. The sheds are too narrow to work on the cars, so they are probably for either shelter or concealment. If you look at the cars on the upper track near the building and compare them to the others on the same track, some of them appear to be open, with some sort of hatch the seems...
It's also normal to wrap portions of the vessel when it is undergoing maintenance to prevent damage to sensitive equipment. I've seen them wrap the antenna masts on Coast Guard buoy tenders (hardly the most secret of ships) while undergoing maintenance.
judging by the aircraft parked there, it defiantly looks like a special Forces base. The helos are H-53s, probably the MH-53J special Operations variant and the C-130s are also spec ops versions (Look at the nose profile). The white birds ate P-3 anti-submarine aircraft, which make sense given the location.
Given it's proximity to Ft. Worth and the fact that the Burns & McDonnell RCS range at the Lockheed-Martin plant appears to no longer be in service, I would guess that this is used by Lockheed.
The one to the right looks like a radar site and is connected by a road to the lower one, which is likely the command / operational center of the facility.
Who are they trying to hide it from? The Russians doubtless know it's there, and even if they didn't you can't really hide HF transmissions. Seems like an exercise in paranoia.
Cape Arago lighthouse is on an island off the Oregon coast just south of the treacherous Coos bay bar. The island can only be reached by the bridge in the pictures. The light has since been automated, and the Coast Guard uses a helicopter to visit it.
That's actually the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Columbia River Bridge, originally built by the Northern Pacific RR. Union Pacific has trackage rights over the BNSF line from Portland to Seattle.
I think that one is now owned by Erickson Aircrane of Central Point OR and is used for transporting disassembled CH-54 Skycrane helicopters to remote operating locations. The Tillamook museum is owned by Jack Erickson, founder of the company.
This area is used as an anchorage for ships waiting to load at the grain terminal just east of this location. If you look to the right you can see the terminal on the north bank just before the Bridge.
Like I've said in other posts, the effect of this sort of censorship makes it really obvious where, if not always what, they are hiding. Once again, what's hidden on Google is visible on Bing.
The fact that the weapons bunkers to the immediate south of the blurred area are not censored strongly infers that these may be the nuclear weapons bunkers. Is this the base that the protesters brok into a year or so back?
I find it interesting that things that are censored on the Bing maps are almost always visible on the Google maps. Like you said, that is an impressive, if rather obvious, job of concealment.
The entire airport is also fuzzed out to a certain extent. Igloos sounds about right.
Interestingly enough, Google maps has street view for that road and it shows a preview, but will not show the actual street view. From the preview it looks like a open flat field, which is about right for a weapons storage site.
Wiki indicates that the airport is also a naval aviation base, which would explain the need for weapons storage.
cthippo: Comments
This is the wreck of the US Coast guard patrol boat Hermes WPC109. She was built by the Bath Iron Works in Maine and launched February 23, 1932. She served in the Pacific during WW2 and was decommissioned in Hawaii in 1948. A decade later she was sold in Alameda CA for scrap and towed to Richmond where she was sunk as part of a breakwater.
Can you share your source for that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USCGC_Onondaga_(WPG-79)
The facility is Istres-Le Tubé Air Base near Marseille. The base is home to Mirage 2000N strike fighters and KC135 tankers, as well as serving as a storage facility for the ASMP nuclear tipped missiles for the Mirages.
The site is censored in Google and Bing, but not Yahoo.
Link below has a photo and some info.
http://ahoy.tk-jk.net/Letters/LibertyShipAlbertM.BoeNOT.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Electronics_Laboratory
Seems reasonable.
My instinct is dust from plowing.
After 9-11 they went crazy and censored all sorts of random stuff on GM, especially in NY. I don't think anyone hasstarted the process of un-censoring them.
Whiteman is a B-2 base for the 509th bomb group and while it could be related to the special needs of that aircraft, it's location across from the baseball fields seems a bit, um, insecure. There is also a separate, secure, weapons storage area at Whiteman, which argues against it being something super secure.
Post stockade, maybe?
http://www.3084adg.us/historical_and_organizational_ba.htm
http://www.airfields.fotopic.net/c1771805.html
The above poster is correct, that is the one-off AEW-AWACS Il-76 "ADNAN 1" prototype that was flown to Iran during the 1991 Gulf war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Air_Force
Info here:
http://www.shipspotting.com/modules/myalbum/photo-1019303-SKEI%D0FAXI
I'll bet they're empty and stored for future use.
The fact that there are a number of privately owned vehicles inside the perimeter argues against it being a highly secure facility.
Note the radial supports holding it up and the fact that it appears to be suspended off the ground.
Given it's proximity to a military airfield, I'm going to go with command and control facility, possibly air defense coordination center.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumho_(South_Hamgyong)
http://wikimapia.org/1475289/Soho-Ri-Nuclear-Facility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Army_Museum
The specific missiles in the thumbnail are a SCUD and a SA2 Guideline
Two days later the ship exploded and destroyed most of the Texas City waterfront, killed the entire fire department, and set another ship loaded with...
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/mleach/airforce/
Description of work from the FAS (look for Technical Operations Division):
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/mleach/airforce/
Looks like a Boeing 727 from here.
Info on it here and pictures before it was demolished.
http://stlouispatina.blogspot.com/2009/02/old-roundhouse-east-st-louis.html
Everything around the facility is blurry (lo res images), but the antenna array itself is clear!
Full details on the fleet here:
http://www.lazygranch.com/janet_registration.htm
http://publicintelligence.net/unknown-navy-project/
Don't you wish all ships came with a description of what's inside? :D
What's interesting is that there are lots and lots of classified things in Palmdale (Home of the Lockheed Skunk Works for example)
The fact that the weapons bunkers to the immediate south of the blurred area are not censored strongly infers that these may be the nuclear weapons bunkers. Is this the base that the protesters brok into a year or so back?
Interestingly enough, Google maps has street view for that road and it shows a preview, but will not show the actual street view. From the preview it looks like a open flat field, which is about right for a weapons storage site.
Wiki indicates that the airport is also a naval aviation base, which would explain the need for weapons storage.
I love how the...