You might remember a couple of months ago when I used this group of buildings at Naval Base Coronado on North Island in San Diego that happens to resemble a Nazi swastika from the air as a way of introducing the concept of Prägnanz from Gestalt psychology. Despite saying very little this was one of the most popular posts ever here at Neural Gourmet with a few hundred MySpacers linking to the image in that post.

Now while this Google Maps/Earth location had been floating around the internet for some time before I used it in my post, since then I’ve been seeing it all over the place. I think the image is so popular because the swastika, though having been used in folk art for centuries across many cultures, has acquired all the negative feelings associated with Nazi Germany. To see a group of buildings on a U.S. naval base that (at least from an aerial perspective) resemble the symbol of the Third Reich arouses deeply contradictory emotions.

And so in the past two months I’ve encountered this image time and again. And everywhere there is rampant speculation and rumor. Why would the Navy build it this way? Was it some kind of secret message? Was the government actually in cahoots with the Nazis? When viewed with the two buildings immediately to the left which looked sort of like airplanes, was it meant to tell a story of the importance of Naval air superiority in World War II?

It was surprising to see that no one thought to do what seemed to me to be the logical thing to do though. Ask someone who knows. Which is what I did.

On August 15 I e-mailed Steve Fiebing, Public Affairs Officer for Naval Base Coronado inquiring about the history of the buildings. Within a few short hours I received a courteous and informative reply from Mr. Fiebing via GM2 Sean Conneely. The answer as to how the U.S. Navy had come to have a Nazi swastika on one of its’ bases was quite simple and humorously stereotypical for a government organization — SNAFU!

What from the air looks like 4 L-shaped buildings arranged to look like a Nazi swastika is in fact 6 buildings. The 4 L-shaped buildings and two central buildings (seen in the 3D rendering here by NG member greyleonard) were constructed between 1969 and 1970, but the Navy never planned for the complex to look as it does. In the reply to my e-mail inquiry, Mr. Fiebing explains what happened:

The original plans submitted to the Navy for the project included the two central buildings which were intended to contain a boiler plant and a recreation room; and a single “L”-shaped 3-story barracks. The plan called for the “L” shaped building to be repeated three times and placed at 90-degree angles to the central buildings. It wasn’t until after the groundbreaking began that Navy officials realized how the buildings would appear when seen from above.

So once again Occam’s razor triumphs over conspiracy and elaborate stories.

But surely the Navy once they realized the error would have halted construction and reworked the design right? Wouldn’t that have been the right thing to do rather than have a symbol of hate on a U.S. Navy base? Well, I suspect that the ‘oversight’ (as described, complete with quotes, by Mr. Fiebing) would have been costly both in terms of money and time to fix. Anyone who has every worked with or for the U.S. government knows that it doesn’t exactly stop and turn on a dime — and you have to fill out requisition forms in triplicate to get the dime in the first place. So they probably figured that from the ground, with all the landscaping, few people would ever realize what the overall shape of the complex resembled and aside from the Navy pilots no one would ever see it from the air for long enough to notice.

But then Google Maps and Google Earth came along and with it came the legions of fans who relentlessly scour every square foot of the Earth looking for anything remotely anomalous. Should we really require the Navy to perform costly and time consuming demolition and construction just so some peoples’ sensibilities won’t be offended by the perceived shape of a complex of buildings as seen from the air?

Apparently the town of Maasmechelen in Belgium feels the need to do just that with a swastika shaped fountain that has been in the town since 1979. While I can appreciate that people in Europe are still sensitive to the symbols of Nazi Germany 60 years on, the 6 building complex at NBC is not a swastika but merely a cluster of buildings resembling a swastika when seen from the air and was never even intended to resemble a swastika. Furthermore the complex, which is currently being used as barracks by Sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1 (and a few administrative offices on the bottom floor of one building), has been in use for over 35 years and would likely require millions to demolish and reconstruct. So I really see no reason why the Navy should be concerned over how this complex is perceived by a few conspiracy minded individuals. And hopefully the facts surrounding this complex will spread as widely as the rumors and speculation have though I doubt it. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Many thanks to Steve Fiebing and GM2 Conneely for their assistance and patience in answering my questions on this topic.

Note: This post appeared on the original Neural Gourmet and has been copied here. It is one of Neural Gourmet’s top ten posts of all time.