Say Anything Blog

I posted on this a couple of years ago.

CORONADO, Calif. - The Navy will spend as much as $600,000 to modify a 40-year-old barracks complex that resembles a swastika from the air, a gaffe that went largely unnoticed before satellite images became easily accessible on the Internet.

The Navy said officials noted the buildings’ shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn’t obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildings’ shape to a wide audience.

The Navy approved the money to change the walkways, landscaping and rooftop solar panels of the four L-shaped barracks, used by members of the Naval Construction Force at the Navy’s amphibious base at Coronado, near San Diego.

“We don’t want to be associated with something as symbolic and hateful as a swastika,” Scott Sutherland, deputy public affairs officer for Navy Region Southwest, told the Los Angeles Times.

Apparently the change is being pushed by a Missouri talk radio host named Dave von Kleist.  While I understand the desire to eradicate any connection between our military and the Nazis, I really never saw this as being all that big of a deal.

Interestingly enough, you can still find the building quickly by searching for “hitler” on Google Maps.