Lajes US Air Base..why Google Earth censored it?

Hi.

Lajes Air Base is located in Terceira Island - Azores - Portugal, due to it´s great geographic position (in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean), it have been a big deal for the USA since WW2...

Visit wikipedia for more information... en.wikipedia.org...


The air base is connected to a public airport, but the military area is restricted to public, i went a couple of times to the social american area using a daily pass (restaurant´s/cinema/shop´s)...but i was not allowed to visit another area.


I dont live in that island, but recently i bought a house near the airport..yesterday i went to Google Earth to see my house....for my surprise the Airport/American Base is censored


if you want to see it in google earth, search for "Lajes Terceira"





I think the censored area is up to 200m from the Air base/airport perimeter..and that black geometric area, which i marked in a circle...is really the confirmation that Google Earth censored it...

Since the beginning of Iraq War...that the Air base have a heavy military traffic..


Most of the American Air/naval Base is not censored in Google Earth...what make this one so special?



(sorry for the english..i´m portuguese).

[edit on 4-7-2008 by fable]

interesting find...they let you see area 51 but not this place? They must have moved the really classified stuff here because of area 51s popularity.

Could be a cloud, just saying not every thing has to be censored or anything like that. just my thoughts on it.

I'm pretty sure there are nukes stored there. Not sure if that has anything to do with it.

ive never seen a cloud with s many right angles before

Probably a re-fueling, jumping off point, with lots of traffic in and out, and they dont want the enemy to get a sense of what exactly is coming and going...

I didnt knew they censored the lajes base in azores , but dont forget that the CIA planes that transport to guantanamo suposed terrorists stop in that base.
Im from portugal too

Originally posted by PokeyJoe
Probably a re-fueling, jumping off point, with lots of traffic in and out, and they dont want the enemy to get a sense of what exactly is coming and going...

Since Google Earth images are static and rarely updated, that is not really an issue. A Google Earth image is great for giving you an idea of what a place looked like on a particular day within the last few years but as far as someone using it to guage military activity, it would be nearly useless.

Considering that there are other pics of the area available online, censoring the GE images seems to be kind of useless, unless there was something in particular that was noticed in the Google Earth image and was redacted after it was noticed...

I think the biggest clue that the area is not blocked deliberately is there is user generated markings in the blocked area. So I assume at one time the image presented was not obscured else it would have never been tagged by the google earth community. As a matter of fact, the base you mention is marked at
N38.766845 W27.097823 by a user.

hello! good to see a felow portuguese in this bands. i´m portuguese (from Terceira island) and when i lived there, i had a pass that alowed me to get in the base. I´ve noticed that censorship in google earth too and its really strange. My experience in that base was all normal, about 4 thousand people in there, been in the control tower, eated almost every week there, spoted planes at day and at night, and nothing special to tell, just alot of common airforce traffic (refuellers, awacs, fighter jets from alot of nationalitys, cargos...) and at night in some sort of special ops you could catch F117 stealths and that kind of cool stuff. Of course if they do have something special it would not be noticed so easely. Now i had a flash and remembered when some years ago i used to saw a place with radioactive signs in an undergroung facility. I believe that island as alot of underground military facilities since WWII... one day when i come back, i will start to explore that island wich i think it as alot of interesting things to tell us!

hello! good to see a felow portuguese in this bands. i´m portuguese (from Terceira island) and when i lived there, i had a pass that alowed me to get in the base. I´ve noticed that censorship in google earth too and its really strange. My experience in that base was all normal, about 4 thousand people in there, been in the control tower, eated almost every week there, spoted planes at day and at night, and nothing special to tell, just alot of common airforce traffic (refuellers, awacs, fighter jets from alot of nationalitys, cargos...) and at night in some sort of special ops you could catch F117 stealths and that kind of cool stuff. Of course if they do have something special it would not be noticed so easely. Now i had a flash and remembered when some years ago i used to saw a place with radioactive signs in an undergroung facility. I believe that island as alot of underground military facilities since WWII... one day when i come back, i will start to explore that island wich i think it as alot of interesting things to tell us!

Here is some info:

Lajes Field

Sorry for the short post, mods, but not sure what else to say.

[edit on 7/7/08 by emsed1]

Also:

Global Security

[edit on 7/7/08 by emsed1]

And i tought i was crazy , some months after the war in iraq started , i was in school , and i swear i saw a black aircraft that i identified has a f-117 flying kinda of low , but the sighting was in the continent.
Now im sure i was not dreaming

[edit on 7-7-2008 by dracodie]

reply to post by fable


hey i saw this i lived there from 2003 - 2005. i live in north dakota now and i find it weird that they did that, but it is an important refueling station for planes headed from the US to Europe now, but was much more tactical during our involvement in WW2. very interesting...

Nice to find some portuguese abovetopsecret fans

I searched a lot of Google Earth Censor...yes, they indeed censor some stuff, but something like Lajes Air Base is considered on "extreme censor", they usually misaligned the images, but in a overall way we can have perception of buildings (ex)..but no more.



This is an Air Force Base censored in Google Earth


en.wikipedia.org...


Maybe in the day of Google Earth satellite taked photos from Terceira Island and Lajes Air Base..it showed something that public shouldnt be allowed to see, and to not censor that only "thing" , they censor all Lajes Air base area..

i´m only speculating..

no idea why lajes is censored...last time i was there was back in january. love lajes. food is awesome, even the E-club has good beer. buddy of mine was telling me when he went over for the invasion back in '03, stopped in lajes for the last night before going in country. the ENTIRE ramp was filled with planes, mostly cargo and tankers. billeting was filled 5-6 deep per room with aircrews. hundreds of mother#ers in flightsuits getting hammered. one big party!

Here's an interesting recent public FYI

U.S. Naval Ship Richard G. Matthiesen arrives in the port of Praia, Azores, Portugal, June 28. The USNS Richard G. Matthiesen delivered more than nine million gallons of jet fuel to support operations at Lajes Field. (

www.lajes.af.mil...

Is nine million gallons of fuel jet an ordinary delivery?

The pier and the fuel infrastructure itself had recently been upgraded according to Maj. Bradford Coley, 65th Logistics Readiness Squadron commander. "Just under $30 million was spent to upgrade the fuel infrastructure and it is now state of the art."

full article

This AFB looks to be an strategic base for the future.



[edit on 13-7-2008 by Tuebor]

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


a freind of mine works and lives there and cant say much about the place
however i can say there are lots of places that hold nukes that you can see on google ....
the americans have helt the base since ww2 i think so they could have alot going on there

check the portuguese AF bases on the mainland - others are cencored [ montijo ] - leading me to suspect that its a clause in the portuguese state secrecy laws and national security .