Here’s the view of BB-61 mothballed at the Ghost Fleet in Benicia, CA in Suisun Bay in 2009, a tugboat is making a wake pushing into position:

A small crew aboard the USS Iowa began hauling in the mooring lines about 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 26, 2012 in Richmond, California. The last line was thrown 20 minutes later to cries of “Ship away!” The ship, its shiny gray paint glistening, began easing away from the dock. A small tugboat, the Delta Billie, eased forward to nudge the Iowa even further into the channel to launch the battleship on its way to its new home in Los Angeles. Below is a photo from the Contra Cosat Times as it slips under the Golden Gate Bridge.

The USS Iowa passes under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco for the final time Saturday afternoon May 26, 2012 enroute to Los Angeles where it is being towed to become a floating museum, a dream that many here had hoped would happen in the Bay Area. (Karl Mondon/Staff)

Read the full story.

USS Iowa on 26 May 2012, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge on her way to the Port of Los Angeles Image: Barry W. Johnson via Wikipedia. Click for much larger image.

Previously we reported on a triangle shape in the desert, now an octagon has been found, about 38 miles north of Las Vegas in the middle of nowhere. It is exactly 1 mile across.

click to magnify the image

Why would anyone take the time to make such a thing?

Location lat/lon:  36.633406° -115.437041°

Some kind of school for creative bulldozing?

Click image to enlarge.

Here’s the details: SOLVED – see solution below

You can find it here at this lat/lon 30.367654, -86.066723 link in Google maps here

It is about 3 miles east of point Washington, FL and just off Choctawatchee Bay. It is about a mile north of the ICCW (Intra Coastal Water Way) and may be part of the Washington National Forest.

Based on GE timeline, it appears to have been made sometime between 6-28-2003 and 11-14-2003 when it first became visible in GE.

Readers, any ideas?

==================================

SOLVED! Verity Jones writes in comments:

Mystery solved. It is part of the Point Washington wastewater treatment facility; you can see the main plant over the river at  30°21’18.88″N, 86° 6’40.24″W if you zoom out.

From Page 6 of the permit here: http://appprod.dep.state.fl.us/nwu/Point_Washington_FLA010252_022_NR_Permit.pdf

“Land Application R-004: An existing 1.1 MGD annual average daily flow permitted capacity Part IV rapid-rate land application system (RIB-004). RIB-004 is a reuse system which consists of two (2) rapid infiltration basins (454,500 square feet, each) on 20.9 total acres with an application rate of 1.94 inches/day at Bunker Road. The rapid infiltration basins are located approximately at <b>latitude 30° 22′ 05″ N, longitude 86°03′ 45″ W.</b>”

When rain causes the volume of wastewater to increase drastically – much more than the wastewater plant can handle, it also becomes very weak and can be pumped to such basins and allowed to filter slowly through the soil which has the effect of cleaning the water.

K-19 was the subject of a movie  K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, is loosely based on the story of the K-19‘s first disaster. I happened to watch it last night on one of the movie channels on DirecTV and wondered whatever happened to the sub. I decided to go looking.

According to this news report (and others), K-19 was sent to the Nerpa shipyard in Snezhnogorsk, Murmansk Oblast for scrapping:

3/28/2002: K-19 TO BE SCRAPPED JUST AS MOVIE ABOUT TRAGEDY SET TO BE RELEASED
On 28 March 2002, the K-19 nuclear submarine was sent to the Nerpa Shipyard for dismantlement. The ship was decommissioned and its reactor removed in the 1970s; it has been in Ara Bay since 1990.The ship’s history, which earned it the nickname “Hiroshima,” includes a 1961 reactor accident that killed eight members of the crew, and a 1972 fire that killed another 28. Shortly after the second accident the K-19 was decommissioned from the Northern Fleet. In July 2002, an American movie about the accident, made by National Geographic, will be released, starring Harrison Ford as former Soviet Navy Captain Nikolay Zateyev. [1,2,3]
[1] “Legendaraya podlodka K-19 otpravlena na utilizatsiyu,” Interfax, 28 March 2002.
[2] “Plavuchaya ‘Khirosima’ otpravlena na utilizatsiyu,” Izvestiya, 29 March 2002.
[3] “Nuclear Submarine Sent for Scrapping,” RIA-Novosti, 28 March 2002; in FBIS Document CEP20020328000135. {Entered on 6/19/2002 TM}

I wondered if the boat might be visible in Google Earth via the historical imagery feature. I set about finding out. The first thing I needed to know was what the boat looked like, particularly from the top down view. I located these plans:

Source: http://www.dga.org/news/v27_2/images/featuresjuly02/k19blueprint_full.html - click to enlarge

Now I set about the task of finding the shipyard. I was able to locate it in Google Earth using the search feature. Doing some online search I found the Nerpa shipyard was located at Snezhnogorsk, Murmansk Oblast, Russia, which I could find in GE at  69.194167°  33.233056°. From there I was able to spot the Nerpa shipyard with the help of a Panoramio image:

Zooming in on the Nerpa shipyard, I started looking through the older imagery. I went on the premise that the shipyard probably could not scrap the boat immediately upon arrival, and given it’s bad karma and radioactive nature, they would likely moor it away from the main facility until they could get to it.

I found one reasonable clear image dated April 30th, 2002 that looked like a good candidate. The shape was right, the conning tower looked right, and no dive planes were visible because the Hotel Class submarines have retractable dive planes to make it easier to moor several boats together without the planes impacting other hulls. Here’s a photo of what is claimed to be K-19 during a towing operation, but I think it is another similar submarine based on the sonar dome at the bow.

Source:  http://www.dynamicscience.com.au/tester/solutions/war/nuclearpower.htm note the slot for the dive planes:

And here. moored, with diving planes retracted:

K19 after her rebuild and bough up to project 701 or HOTEL II standard Date unknown. Source: Subsim Radio Room

Source: Subsim Radio Room

Note in the photo above, the dive planes appear to be retracted.

And here is Gremikha naval base from Google Earth,  68.068431°  39.488358° August 2nd, 2003, note the two boats at the dock missing, one of which was K-19 as shown above:

So the news reports timeline of removal fits the images above.

Finally here is what I think is the K-19 at Nerpa shipyard in April 2002, click to enlarge the image:

The reasoning as to why I think this is the K-19 follows:

• The timing is right – one month after news reports said it would be there
• It is away from the main facility – waiting to be scrapped
• The top down view shape is right
• No bow planes – retracted for mooring
• The length (114 meters) is correct, based on Google Earth’s measurement tool
• There is a hole where the two nuclear reactors would be – they were removed many years before
• It isn’t there in later photos. News reports and the Submsim Radio Room suggest it was started scrapping by 2005. For that they’d move it from the mooring dock.

Here is the GE measurement view:

Here’s a 2003 news report:

Scrapping of the infamous Russian nuclear submarine K-19 will take place at Nerpa shipyard in Snezhnogorsk, Murmansk region. Bellona, 03/09-2003

And the SubSim Radio Room BBS showing a photo of it being cut up

It seems though, the story has not stopped there. A former conscript who served on the sub, now turned millionaire, bought the remains of the sub before scrapping got too far along:

The submarine – the USSR’s first underwater nuclear vessel – was scrapped in 2003, some 13 years after it was taken out of service. Mr Romanov has bought the main section of the submarine, including its conning tower which will now be painstakingly repaired.

“I will get it restored by September and then it will be moved to near Moscow and put back in the water. Around it we will build a club for submarine veterans with a little hotel for them to stay in.”

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Hearts-Romanov-brings-on-a.2793731.jp

And finally, bad luck seems to follow even the movie version of the K-19, which was a tourist attraction in Providence, RI, but was sunk in a storm in 2007.

Then it was raised, then scrapped, then caught fire.

April 2007 Providence Journal photo / Bill Murphy

More photos here.

Military Teams Raise Sunken Russian Sub Museum

AP July 25: This photo shows former Soviet submarine Juliett 484 coming to the surface of the Providence River in Providence, R.I.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,391505,00.html

Soviet Sub

When most attractions close for good, it happens quietly. Not so for the Juliett 484. The Soviet Sub that starred in “K-19: The Widowmaker,” and then went on to become a tourist attraction in Providence Harbor — until it was sunk by a freak storm in 2007 — was raised to surface and was being scrapped in the nearby Providence River when it caught fire. Three fire boats were needed to extinguish the smokey flames of the burning sub, only a few hundred feet offshore. Residual oil in the sub’s bilges was blamed. [RoadsideAmerica.com Team, 03/26/2011]

Remains of Russian sub catch fire

http://www2.turnto10.com/news/2011/mar/25/remains-russian-sub-catch-fire-ar-433835/

While the movie version seems to be finally gone, we await the original K-19 showing up with bad karma again someplace at the behest of the Russian millionaire.

See it on Google Maps here

Here is what it looks like from helicopter. What is it? Answer below.

Image: Bob Barbanes

A pointer for pilots to help them find the airfield? No. It’s a gunnery range. Note the craters. The arrow double wedge shape was like chosen to allow for wind variance and to keep the exploding shells from starting fires in the trees. It would allow for two categories on ordnance to be tested with different ranges.

Anybody know what this is? Here’s the detail known so far:

• Lat/lon  33.744375° -112.633221° 6.3 miles WSW  of Wittmann, Arizona.
• The triangle is bordered with brush/bushy plants that appear to be part of the natural area.
• The triangle measures 4123 feet or 0.78 miles on each side.
• The apex of the triangle is aligned to true North
• There are no structures nearby

There’s another similar triangle nearby in Surprise, AZ, 17 miles southeast, same size, different orientation, with a center line:

Click to enlarge. This one seems to have been built onto by some sort of housing development.

It’s just been a few days since Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and already there are a variety of 3D models of his mansion available in the Google 3D Warehouse. Some are nice renderings, some use very realistic textures, and one is simply meant to be funny. However, all of them show that there are some very talented modelers out there, being able to produce models of this quality in such a short time frame.

Here are some of the best ones, in no particular order:

From J.A. Alvarez | details | KMZ

From Finnian | details | KMZ

From Aerilius | details | KMZ

From timmy | details | KMZ

From Mogens Bregnbaek | details | KMZ

I would assume that Google will post one of them as a default 3D model in Google Earth at some point. I wonder which one they’ll use? Which one would you choose?

Answer and ground level image below.

If you have kids, you’d probably seen this scene from the movie “Cars”.

It is modeled on a real Hotel along Route 66, the one in the Google Earth photo at  34.902400° -110.168892°

From Wikipedia

Wigwam village #6: Holbrook, Arizona

Individual Unit, Wigwam Motel, Holbrook, Arizona

Built in 1950 by Arizona motel owner Chester E. Lewis, the plans were based on the original of Frank A. Redford. Lewis first became aware of the distinctive wigwam designs when he was passing through Cave City in 1938. He purchased the rights to Redford’s design, as well as the right to use the name “Wigwam Village” in a novel royalty agreement: coin operated radios would be installed in Lewis’ Wigwam Village, and every dime inserted for 30 minutes of play would be sent to Redford as payment.

Lewis operated the motel successfully until closing it in 1974 when Interstate 40 bypassed downtown Holbrook. Two years after his death in 1986, sons Clifton and Paul Lewis and daughter Elinor renovated the motel, finally reopening it in 1988.

Fifteen concrete and steel teepees are arranged as a square with one edge missing where the main office is located. They are numbered from 1 to 16 (there is no teepee 13). The diameter of the base of each teepee is 14 feet (4.3 m), with each unit 32 feet (9.8 m) in height. Behind the main room of each unit is a small bathroom with sink, toilet, and shower. Current rooms contain the original restored hickory furniture, two double beds, cable TV and a window mounted air conditioner; there are no telephones or Internet access. Vintage restored automobiles from the 1960‘s and earlier are located throughout the parking area. Small green metal benches etched with the words “Wigwam Village #6″ are scattered throughout the complex as well.

Wigwam Motel, Holbrook, Arizona

The Lewis family continues to run and maintain Wigwam Village #6. Elinor often shows up at 4:00 pm to open the office, and if requested, will fill a small ice bucket (there is no ice machine in keeping with the authenticity of the restoration) for customers. Near the registration desk is a small room which contains many of Chester Lewis’ memorabilia (including a necklace of human teeth of unknown origin).

The individual units are called “wigwams;” not “rooms,” “tepees” or “cabins.” Wigwam number 1 was featured in the second episode of Oprah and Gayle’s Big Adventure on Oprah’s TV show.

Nearby places of interest include Petrified Forest National Monument and Meteor Crater (Barringer Crater). Wigwam Village #6 is located on Historic Route 66, 811 West Hopi Drive, Holbrook, Arizona.

53.909579°  -166.513307° See in Google Earth

Some of your might recognize the harbor from a TV show.

Yes, Dutch Harbor, Unalaska. Home of the “Deadliest Catch” crabbing fleet.

Apparently the eagles know when their ship has come in. Why hunt when you can have it delivered?

click to magnify the image – details on the image here

Answer below.

The Devils Tower National Monument:  Lat/Lon 44.589736° -104.714076°

The 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind used the formation as a plot element and as a location for its alien contact scene and climactic scenes.