The Swastika Building

Thursday, 27th September 2007 by

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.

swastika.jpg

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 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 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 Google News instead.