The Swastika Building
Thanks to the power of Google Earth and the internet the US Navy
have decided to spend as much as $600,000 on major
alterations to a perfectly good barracks. The reason for the spend
is that, when viewed on Google Earth, the building complex
resembles a swastika.
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The four unconnected buildings are part of the Coronado Naval
Amphibious Base and were built in 1967. The Navy have stated that
they did notice the shape during construction, but decided that
no-one would ever see it from above so there was no point in
wasting the money starting again with a new design.
Of course in the 60s no-one ever thought that Google Earth would
ever exist. After the shape was http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/19558/page/0/fpart/1/vc/1
initially spotted back in 2005, all the crazy internet
theorists have created elaborate stories of how the barracks were
in fact designed by evil Nazis.
According to these stories, the Nazis managed to infiltrate the
US Navy to execute their cunning plan for a Swastika building
layout, with other aeroplane-shaped buildings “pointing at it”.
This design would then deliver their message of hate across the
globe, just as soon as someone bothered to invent the internet,
Google and then Google Earth…
Of course, that’s all nonsense; in reality it’s just some
buildings with an unfortunate layout. The US Navy probably have
better things to be spending their money on, but the internet
hordes have spoken so the barracks must be changed, whatever the
cost.
Thanks to the http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-swastika26sep26,0,2973328.story?coll=la-home-center
LA Times via js and many others.
Update: Apparently the link to LA Times is demanding a login
from most people, which is very annoying. Try http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Coronado swastika
Google News instead.