Googlemap military fun

Yes. Your post was such that you appeared to have missed it. You seemed surprised at the similarity so I reminded you of my post that said what they were.

But you didn’t really say anything about their similarity (it’s not really implicit in them being Palmerston forts, as some of the others are not so strikingly similar).

Whatever.

Anyhow Here is another layer for Google Earth that shows fortifications of all kinds all over the planet. Something like 400+ entries. A lot of it is in French but at those sites you can usually find other stuff posted (pics, Wiki links and the like) on or near the same locations. One interesting thing about it is how much influence one can see from Vauban. All over the world, one can see the same angular bastions in former colonies as well as Europe itself. In the European sites, one can often see the familar pattern of medieval fortress surrounded by Vauban style bastions, moats, and ravelins.

This is the former CFB Lahr base, now a civilian airstrip, with a few businesses on what was the base, but largely abandoned as well.

http://www.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lahr+germany&ie=UTF8&ll=48.356876,7.826042&spn=0.012718,0.037594&t=h&z=15

This is the Kaserne, which had the high school, grocery store, dentist, bowling alley, etc:

http://www.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lahr+germany&ie=UTF8&ll=48.338259,7.888902&spn=0.003181,0.009398&t=h&z=17

Very much abandoned, except perhaps for an area that might now belong to the Heart Centre (a Canadian-German hospital back in the early 90s, IIRC).

Home sweet home for 3 years.

The remains of Stoney Cross Airfield (New Forest, England, WWII)

The remains of RAF Castle Archdale, buried underneath a tonne of mobile homes.

I skipped out on Top Gear to show my parents the Titanic Quarter in Belfast (basically the docklands) and came across HMS Caroline a survivor (the last according to Wikipedia) of the battle of Jutland.

Way cool. I didn’t realize that there were any survivors afloat of Jutland.

Shame I didn’t know about it sooner, or that it’s open from time to time.

I wonder if they open up the turbines during the one day of the year that the public may visit her. It would be interesting to see some first generation steam turbines.

Just up the road from me, is Blackbushe Airport which served as RAF Hartford Bridge during the war. Nowadays it’s used for business and pleasure flights.

If you walk on the heathland around there you can still stumble across the trenches/pipelines that they used to fill with gasoline to be set on fire in order to disperse fog: the system was called FIDO.

You know what city has some cool old harbor defences? San Francisco, that’s what. The cliffs and hills along the north side really give coastal artillery a great shot at invaders. If you’re using Google Earth, check it out in 3D and it really shows just how much natural fortification the city has from the sea.

Here you can almost not quite see the two six pound breach loaders that serve as the primary defense of Monterey Bay (well, if you don’t count the Coast Guard station as part of the Bay’s defenses). :cool:

Another bit of military tomfoolery, the crater left by operation Castle Bravo.

Like I mentioned in Post #7.

Here’s the former Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag which was purchased by China with the announced intent of becoming a ‘floating casino’ (wink wink) but has mysteriously been painted PLAN gray.

Yeah I was, um, confirming that I’d checked it out for you :o

The city surrounding the port looks relentlessly grim.

Perhaps not a military installation, here is the North Korean village of Kijong-dong complete with overly large flag pole, just so the world knows that Kim Jong-il doesn’t feel inadequate in any way :stuck_out_tongue:

Your link says it’s Taranto, Italy. :smiley:

Ok, this is Kijong-dong :slight_smile:

I just noticed that the little text bubbles cast shadows on the maps :stuck_out_tongue:

That truly is an impressive monument to Kim’s manliness. It sure is a shame that none of the flagpoles that we have on our military installations and outposts on every continent in the world can truly match the might and splendor of the one Kim has in Korea :smiley: