navy barracks swastika

The Navy plans to spend $600,000 for "camouflage" landscaping and rooftop adjustments so that 1960s-era barracks at the Naval Base Coronado near San Diego will no longer look like a Nazi swastika from the air.

The resemblance went unnoticed by the public for decades until it was spotted in aerial views on Google Earth.

But Navy officials said they became aware of it shortly after the 1967 groundbreaking, and had decided not to do anything.

"There was no reason to redo the buildings because they were in use," a spokeswoman for the base, Angelic Dolan, said. She added that the buildings were in a no-fly zone that is off limits to commercial airlines, so most people would not see them from the air.

"You have to realize back in the '60s we did not have the Internet," Ms. Dolan said. "We don't want to offend anyone, and we don't want to be associated with the symbol."

The Navy's plans were reported Monday in The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Anti-Defamation League in San Diego has objected to the shape of the buildings.

"We told the Navy this was an incredibly inappropriate shape for a structure on a military installation," said Morris S. Casuto, regional director of the organization. He added, however, that his group "never ascribed evil intent to the structures' design."

Mr. Casuto praised the Navy for recognizing the problem and "doing the right thing."

The $600,000 for the changes is included in the Navy's approved 2008 budget.

The offending structure can be found at Bougainville Road, US Navy Exchange, San Diego. The conspiracy theorists among you will doubtless hear the distant sound of black helicopters when we reveal that the Navy has only now admitted it "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".

Hmmm. Once satellite images had fingered where the Führer ended up after the Third Reich went titsup, the pressure on the Navy to act steadily mounted. Among the heavyweight support for the building's denazification was Dave vonKleist, host of Missouri-based radio-talk show The Power Hour who told the LA Times he "wrote to military officials calling for action".

Well, it seems to have worked, since the Navy will spend up to $600k to "change the walkways, landscaping and rooftop solar panels of the four L-shaped barracks". Scott Sutherland, deputy public affairs officer for Navy Region Southwest, confirmed: "We don't want to be associated with something as symbolic and hateful as a swastika."

Quite right too; in which case, when it's finished remodelling Hitler's San Diego pad, the Navy might want to think about shifting a couple of runways down at Denver International Airport: