Enjoy our favourite warship google earth splice errors!
Wunderschiff! We’ve seen enough views of ships, 3,000 and counting, in our many pages, to know when we have encountered a truly excellent google splice error, or other oddity in the space/time continuum! This quick post shares a few of our favourite multi-phasic, time-shifting, perspective-smashing, supership-creating views.
The MV Ocean Trader is a highly classified US naval asset, at least from about midships towards the stern. This vessel has been fitted with some type of redaction weapon that removes sensitive spaces from overhead imagery. For the classified/redacted portion, you can visit our USN auxiliaries and other ships page. But be warned, you can’t unsee the stern half.The Bouvet, D-624 shows the French design propensity for taking the “the cult of the offensive” too far…a ship with only a bow, that can only ever advance. It was headed for scrapping near Ghent, Belgium, when some of it got captured. This 1/3rd of the T-47 class destroyer is the sharpest view we have. Her sistership Maillé-Brézé D-627 survives as a museum ship at Nantes, so visit our French destroyers page to see the whole package.The new Indian Navy aircraft carrier, according to this view, is a 1,130′ foot behemoth, with two islands, and more elevators! For other views of the (270’ shorter) Vikrant under construction, see our Indian Navy carriers page.We explored INS Viraat / HMS Hermes’ illustrious career in a post, but this 2015 view of her ”fading away” prefigured the sad Alang dismantlement, fully complete by July, 2021.The Greek naval ports, including Souda Bay, are some of the most effectively pixelated (censored) naval areas in the World. it is difficult to find any recent views of the Hellenic Navy, and they even built some type of sub-pen to protect the Salamis, an active Trireme, from Persian aerial reconnaissance. The above view shows an added layer of protection fitted to their Meko class frigates in about 2015: a cloaking device.You have heard of the flying Dutchman, well this is the ghost pentekonter! The 50-oared reconstruction of a Greek classical war galley usually calls Volos home, but occasionally it appears as a kind of afterimage on views of Volos, like in the above view. Oddly, this is also the best view of it, with the most detail of the single mast and many thwarts for the rowers.Ghost Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer or destroyer escort arriving at Kure Harbor with assistance from phantom tugs, June 2017. The spectral ship seems to be aiming to go alongside JS Inazuma DD-105.
The Searchers 