Return to K-Mac's home pageYou, Too, Can Be A Cold War Spy


Original Note, circa 2002 One of my favorite Web sites is Terraserver (http://terraserver.microsoft.com), where you can interactively access an enormous database of aerial photography images from the files of The United States Geological Survey (USGS). The Terraserver images can be searched by place name, or by point-and-clicking via the Encarta Virtual Globe. You can continue zooming in to a resolution of 1 meter per pixel--at which level, given good lighting, you can make out objects as small as individual cars sitting in individual driveways.

I enjoy looking at photos of places I've been or famous places I might like to go, but the most fun I've had is trying to locate Interesting Manmade Objects--especially mobile objects which just happened to be caught in situ when the USGS survey flight passed overhead. The whole process of trying to figure out where to look, and then decipher what I'm looking at, has lovely resonances of Alistair MacLean novels and Cold War spy movies--especially since many of my chosen targets have some military significance. The Terraserver site has its own extensive directory of Famous Places; what appears below is my personal directory of Cool Discoveries. Drop me a line if your eyes tell you differently than mine did me.

P.S. This list is at least partly a collaborative effort--my friend Greg Cronau contributed a number of "sightings," and I called on the folks in rec.aviation.military and sci.military.naval (most notably Andrew Toppan) for assistance with some identifications.

April 2005 Update: Originally, this page was built around live links to the Microsoft TerraServer site. I didn't anticipate that TerraServer would be continuously updating (not just expanding) its database of images, and that older images would become unavailable. I had a number of the "finds" saved locally, and this version of the page uses those images instead of linking back to TerraServer. But there were some 'casualties,' most notably the March 29, 1992 images of the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

On the plus side, the new "Urban" image sets on TerraServer are both in color and have .25 meter per pixel resolution. And although their partnership has now ended, for a period of a couple of years Mapquest was making available color aerial photography from GlobeXplorer. The GlobeXplorer images, alas, are effectively undated, which complicates the problem of identifying what's in them.

June 2009 Update When I first published this page circa 2002, there was a TerraServer, but there was no Google Earth (June 2005), no Windows Live Local (December 2005), no WikiMapia (May 2006). The imagery keeps getting better (color, high-res, 3D, 360-degree ground level), and so do the tools.  It turns out that this little "I spy--" game I was playing is now is so popular that it's becoming difficult to find a find that hasn't been identified. WikiMapia now has over 10,000,000 marked features, and sites like virtualglobetrotting.com have assembled extensive 'highlight tours' of locations, structures and vehicles. I'm particularly impressed with how many aircraft in flight have been captured and spotted.

In that context, it makes no sense to update or add to this page. I'm leaving it in place as a kind of Web 1.0 monument to the Web 2.0 world which was then on the horizon.

Last Revised: June 22, 2009


STOP HERE The CIA Audition - If you'd like, you can challenge yourself with a pageful of USGS and GlobeXpress photos offered with no identifying information. Click through to the high-resolution images. Date and location hints are available if you get stuck. Then come back here to see how your guesses match up with ours.


SHIPS AND PLACES SHIPS GO

Battleship Museums

Click for larger image BB 35 Texas at San Jacinto, Texas (Jan 15, 1995) Sure, a museum ship is a fixed target, so we don't get any difficulty points. But this photo is still useful for answering the age-old question, how big is a battleship? BB 35 Texas is a pre-World War I dreadnought of the New York class, 573' long with an extreme beam of 95'3". Its 14" main armament played a part in the D-Day bombardment off Point du Loc in 1944, and in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. Texas was decommissioned in 1948; its sister ship BB 34 New York was sunk as a target near Hawaii in 1948.
Click for larger image BB 55 North Carolina at Wilmington, North Carolina (Feb 3, 1993) Another museum ship, the first of the Navy's modern fast battleships. Launched in 1940 and commissioned in 1941, North Carolina served with the Pacific Fleet throughout World War II. It's considerably larger than Texas, at a length of 728'9" and a beam of 108'4", and mounts nine 16" 45 caliber main guns in three turrets. A sister ship, BB 56 Washington, was scrapped in 1961.
Click for larger image BB 59 Massachusetts at Fall River, Massachusetts (Mar 29, 1995) Massachusetts is one of two surviving examples of the four-hull South Dakota class. Slightly smaller than the North Carolina class (at 680'10" x 107'11") but mounting the same primary and nearly identical secondary armament, Massachusetts earned eleven Battle Stars in World War II deployments. The other main vessels hiding in the shadow of the highway bridge are DD 850 Joseph P. Kennedy. Jr.and the submarine Lionfish. BB 59's sister ship BB 60 Alabama is a museum in Mobile, Alabama, but Terraserver doesn't have coverage of that location at this time.

Carrier Museums

Click for larger image CV 10 Yorktown and NSS Savannah at Charleston, South Carolina (Feb 12, 1989) A distinctly inferior image of the Yorktown at its museum mooring at Patriots Point in Charleston Harbor. At the time this photo was taken, the nuclear-powered demonstration vessel NSS Savannah (next largest vessel) was also located at the museum. It has since been removed to the James River Merchant Marine Reserve. The other vessels are DD-724 Laffey, SS-343 Clamagore, and Coast Guard Cutter Ingham. GlobeXpress offers a more recent view.
Click for larger image CV 11 Intrepid at New York, New York (Mar 13, 1995) Launched in 1943, this World War II veteran has been the centerpiece of an air-sea-land museum since 1982. Much of its aircraft collection is stored on deck; the distinctive outline of the A-12 Blackbird is readily visible. On the other side of the pier from the 900-foot Intrepid are the destroyer USS Edison and the guided missile submarine USS Growler, both dating to the late 1950s.
CV 16 Lexington at Corpus Christi, Texas (Jan 15, 1995) After nearly fifty years of service, the "Blue Ghost" reached her final mooring as a museum ship on June 17, 1992.
CV 12 Hornet at Oakland-Alameda, California (Feb 27, 2004) - Tied up at Pier 3 of the former Naval Air Station Alameda is the World War II veteran Hornet, which opened as a museum in 1998. The Hornet was actually sold for scrapping in April of 1993 and towed to San Francisco to go under the torch, but the scrapper defaulted anf the US Navy regained possession. I was never able to locate the Hornet in the original Terraserver database; the July 10, 1993 image of Pier 3 showed CVN 70 Carl Vinson berthed there.

Shipyard Sightings

In the usual course of events, a number of active-duty carriers can be found in various states of construction or rehabilitation in shipyards on both coasts. For instance:

   
Click for larger image CVN 75 Truman building at Newport News, Virginia (Mar 10, 1995) - Dry Dock 12 at Newport News Shipbuilding is the largest in the Western hemisphere, at 664 meters long. This drydock is serviced by the famous blue 900-ton travelling crane, visible here as a shadow across the bow of the Truman.
If the date on this photo can be trusted, that's CVN 76 Reagan in the back half of Newport News.'s Dry Dock #12.
CVN 72 Lincoln in Post Shakedown Availability (PSA) at Newport News, Virginia (Apr 8, 1990) - Further to the southeast along Newport News' two-mile waterfront is a drydock used for 'tune-ups.' Following the shakedown trials, new carriers return to the shipyard for a three month PSA during which various deficiencies discovered during shakedown are addressed.
CVN 65 Enterprise at Newport News, Virginia (Mar 22, 1994) - A third location at Newport News where carriers can frequently be seen is this pier near the southeastern end of the yard.
Click for larger image In an image on the Newport News site, you can see CVN 69 Eisenhower berthed here. This pier seems to be used for Complex Overhauls and other maintenance when hull work is not involved.
Click for larger image LHD 2 Essex at Ingalls Shipbuilding, Pascagoula, Mississippi (Feb 19, 1992) The Essex is the aircraft-carrier-like vessel (actually an amphibious assault ship) moored along the river at the lower right. The rectangular shape in the water to the lower left is a floating drydock used to launch ships (no more sliding down the ways). The other vessels along the waterfront look to be guided-missile cruisers (CG) or destroyers (DDG)--Ingalls built several of each for the Navy in the 1990s. Another LHD and CG or DDG are nearing completion toward the lower left--the shadows betray them. A low-angle color view of the "new yard" from the Ingalls site helps sort out the structures on land. (Thanks to Christopher Murray)

Reserve and Active-Duty Vessels

It's more of a challenge to find the warships that still move (even if only at the urging of a tug). Outside of shipyards such as Newport News, the best places to start looking are the shrinking reserve fleet (NISMF) and the dwindling number of operational bases - principally San Diego, Norfolk, and Bremerton.

Click for larger image Bremerton is home to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Pacific Fleet's repository of the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility. This extraordinary collection of vessels was photographed July 7, 1994: two battleships and five aircraft carriers, along with a wolf pack's worth of submarines and a task force's quota of cruisers and destroyers. The NISMF berths are at left, and the naval base and shipyard are at the right.
Click for larger image A closer look at the NISMF piers on July 7, 1994 shows CV 12 Hornet, BB 62 New Jersey, CV 41 Midway, BB 63 Missouri, CV 20 Bennington and-at the far right--CV 34 Oriskany.
Click for larger image On that same day, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard's largest drydock contained CVN 68 Nimitz.
Click for larger image Looking in on the NISMF piers a few years later, we find dramatic change--the two Essex-class carriers are gone, CV 12 Hornet to Alameda as a museum and CV 20 Bennington to the scrappers. In their places we find CV 62 Independence (left) and CV 61 Ranger (right). The Iowa-class battleships are likewise gone, BB 62 New Jersey to Camden and BB 63 Missouri to Pearl Harbor as museums.
Click for larger image A wider view of Bremerton from three years later shows the Independence, Midway, and Ranger still in place, though accompanied by a different--and smaller--set of lesser warships and auxiliaries. At the wharf alongside the great drydock is CVN 70 Vinson, homeported at Bremerton since January 1997. Oriskany is gone, en route to her ultimate fate--to be sunk off Florida in 2005 as part of an artificial reef.

A current view would show the Midway also absent, having gone to San Diego as a museum. Joinng the mothball lineup would be CV 64 Constellation, finally retired from long duty with the Pacific Fleet.

Click for larger image CVA 66 America at Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania (Mar 29, 1992) The first of the Kitty Hawk class to be retired, America left its berth in Philadelphia on 19 April, 2005 on a trip which would end with her being sunk in 17,000 feet of water 250 miles off the North Carolina coast. After four weeks of live explosives tests designed to collect data on the vulnerability of supercarriers to attack, America was scuttled on May 14, 2005.
In August and September 1998, the mothballed aircraft carriers CV 59 Forrestal and CV 60 Saratoga and the battleship BB 61 Iowa were moved north from the former Philadelphia Navy Yard to Newport, Rhode Island, the site of the Naval War College. None of the vessels was open to the public. The Iowa has since been towed to the West Coast NISMF anchorage of Suisan Bay, California, and is expected to eventually become a museum in San Francisco.
There are only three places in the world where you have a decent chance of catching two or more of the US's dozen commissioned carriers together: Norfolk/Newport News, Bremerton, and San Diego. Three were caught together at San Diego in this view taken June 15, 2002 (left 2/3) and May 22, 2002 (right 1/3). The carrier at lower right is CVA 64 Constellation; she arrived at San Diego September 15, 2001, and would remain there until she sortied in October for JTFEX, a battle group exercise to prepare her for her 21st and final deployment. The other carriers are CVN 74 John Stennis, which had returned from its third deployment May 28, 2002, and CVN 68 Nimitz, which had arrived at its new homeport November 13, 2001.

Aircraft and the Places They Fly From

In this image dated May 18, 1995, three B-52 Stratofortress bombers sit on the Alert Parking Ramp (aka the "Christmas tree") at the east end of Minot Air Force Base, Minot ND. Aircraft on the APR are fully fueled, armed, and ready to scramble on short notice.
Dover Air Force Base, Dover DE, is home to two wings of C-5 Galaxy transports. In this image dated February 26, 1998, eleven of the massive aircraft appear on their maintenance stands, along with the oil and exhaust "shadows" of two more. 
Prior to the US Forest Service's 2004 decision to cease contracting for large tanker aircraft for firefighting, one of the most extraordinary collections of vintage prop-driven aircraft anywhere could be found in Greybull, Wyoming, on the grounds of Hawkins & Powers Aviation. The fleet, seen here in February 1998, included three KC-97 Stratotankers, the last flyable C-82 Packet, and an array of P-2V Neptunes, PB4Y Privateers, C-119 Flying Boxcars, and C-130 Hercules. Hawkins & Powers declared bankruptcy in 2005, and the aircraft were sold off in 2006.

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Last Revised: 22 June 2009