Following on from January’s World’s biggest passenger ships post, today we’re going to be looking at the largest aircraft carriers on the water. These warships act as mobile airbases, allowing aircraft to be launched as close to the theatre of war as possible.

Starting with the largest, the undisputed Queen of the seas is the USS Enterprise, which takes the title of being the largest naval vessel on Earth (or water!), with a massive length of 342.3 metres.

Enterprise is moored up alongside the almost-as-large USS Harry Truman and Roosevelt. Like the other seven of the Nimitz class carriers, these are 333m long. Roosevelt, nicknamed ‘Rough Rider’, was responsible for nearly 5000 tonnes of bombs dropped during the first Gulf War.

The Naval Station at Norfolk, Virginia, where these three ships reside when not on active duty, is actually the largest naval base in the World, with 75 ships calling it home – as well as having, incidentally, a huge amount of car-parking spaces!

The USS George HW Bush is the last in Nimitz class, before the new Ford class carriers start being built, and is named for former President Bush. Costing a whopping $4.5 billion, this 333m carrier is on track to be delivered this year. She is seen here in construction at the Northrop Grumman shipyard, also in Norfolk.

(You can see a Microsoft Live Maps birds eye view of it in construction here, but sadly it still isn’t compatible with Safari!)

Back in 1957, the largest naval vessel ever built was the Forrestal Class USS Ranger, which measures 319m and is capable of carrying up to 90 aircraft aboard.

Ranger is seen here with Forrestal class USS Independence and the Kitty Hawk class USS Constellation, which have all been decommissioned to the Naval Air Station in Bremerton, WA.

Now taking the role of the Sea, Air and Space museum in New York City, the USS Intrepid saw service from World War 2 right through to 1974, including in the Vietnam war, where planes would often be launched from her in intervals as small as every 26 seconds!

In late 2006 Intrepid was dragged out of the Hudson river’s mud (with considerable effort) and transferred to Staten Island for repair work. She is expected to be back on display in September.

The most noticeable of Intrepid’s aircraft is the Lockheed A-12, the precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird which is famed for flying from New York to London in 1 hour 54 minutes! You might recognise the plane from ‘I am Legend’, where Will Smith’s character spends time hitting golf balls from her wing.

She may be just a wee tiddler at 214m (this photo shows a comparison between a Nimitz class ship and the HMS Illustrious), but it would be wrong to not include at least one British vessel! HMS Invincible was decommissioned in 2005, and is seen here at Portsmouth Harbour. She’s definitely going nowhere – you can see her propellers lying on the deck!

She was superseded by HMS Illustrious – found in dry-dock in Rosyth having a refit, which was completed last year. In 2014, the first of the new Queen Elizabeth class carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth is due to enter service, at a much more substantial 274m in length. HMS Prince of Wales will join her in 2016.

Previosuly on Google Sightseeing: Carrier Landing Practice Runway and Landlocked.

Thanks: Andrew, Kevin, tsw and many, many others!

The Google Lat Long blog has announced that Google has just added 12 more US cities to their street view coverage, bringing their total coverage to, um.. lots. The new cities added are as follows:

• Albany and Schenectady, NY
• Boise, ID
• Juneau, AK
• Kansas City, MO
• Manchester, NH
• Milwaukee, WI
• Research Triangle Park (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), NC
• San Antonio, TX
• Salt Lake City, UT

And presumably just for today (because today is Valentine’s Day in case you’d forgotten), it seems the little Street View guy is standing on a little love heart.

Aww, puke.

(It’s Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.)

Pollepel Island is located in the Hudson River, New York. A characterless lump of rock, it would have been completely uninteresting had Francis Bannerman not decided to build a castle on the island, and then fill it with weapons…

This was in the late 1800s and Bannerman, a Scottish immigrant, and the world’s largest buyer of surplus military equipment was doing a roaring trade in munitions. When he purchased most of the captured goods from the Spanish American war he needed somewhere to store it all, preferably somewhere where large amounts of gunpowder would be safe.

So he purchased Pollepel Island and set about building an imitation Scottish castle of his own design, complete with lookout turrets and a moat. The buildings took 17 years to complete and feature giant concrete text across the side which reads “Bannerman’s Island Arsenal”.

Years later, the family sold the island back to New York State who for a short time operated tours around the castle. Although all the munitions had been removed, in 1969 a fire of “unknown origin” destroyed the building’s interiors, making it too dangerous to visit. Today, a trust group hope to stabilise the castle and re-open it for tours.

More info on the castle at its official website, the Hudson river site, and of course Wikipedia.

Thanks to Marc Cohen and Bill Parco.

A small German church has laid a bold claim to the title of “World’s most squinty building“.

Located in the town of Bad Frankenhausen, the bell tower of a 14th century church has been measured at an angle of 4.5 degrees to the vertical. With the backing of the Guinness Book of World Records, the town hopes to steal the limelight from the well know Leaning tower of Pisa and its puny 3.97 degree angle.

The folks in Italy responded to the announcement with barely more than a “meh”.

However, the nearby German town of Suurhusen kicked up fuss with their leaning church tower of 5.07 degrees, claiming this to be the true title holder¹.

Google Earth users might ask what all the fuss is about as, from appearances, the cities of New York and Dallas must hold the title with their precarious leaning skyscrapers.

These towers are, of course, not leaning at all. They are at the points where two differently angled aerial photographs have been stitched together.

Previously on Google Sightseeing we’ve seen The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Leaning Tower of Niles and the intentionally leaning Kio Towers which, at 15 degrees to the vertical, must surely be a world record contender?

Thanks: Sunday Telegraph, Craig Simpson, Simone, Jeff Cutter & Catdoor

While on holiday we missed the news of a new Chinese nuclear submarine being spotted on Google Earth.

Not much is known about the new class of Ballistic Missile Submarine, which is called the Jin-class or Type 094, but the US government estimated last year that China might build 5 of them to act as a permanent sea-based deterrent.

While we’re on the subject of elusive submarines, this brown looking mini-submarine is in fact a real-life Yellow Submarine!

It was built by an enterprising chap from Brooklyn who intended to recover the treasures of the sunken Andrea Doria, which wrecked on its way to New York city in 1956. With investment from the locals he designed and built the mini-sub himself, painting it yellow because it was the cheapest paint to hand.

Unfortunately, during its launch in 1970, the submarine sank (unintentionally) and the locals weren’t prepared to continue to invest in the builder’s madcap idea. The sub was eventually scavenged itself, and its rotting shell remains abandoned in the small ship graveyard of Coney Island Creek.

The full history and pictures from the past and present of the submarine are available on Forgotten NY

Thanks: Thomas Paul