Fighter in the Car Park

By Mark Steer

Fighter in a car park - an everyday occurrence in Germany.

It's a plane in a car park and it looks real enough to me. Some chap on a web forum, however, has just tried to persuade me that this image is merely an artifact of the way Google Earth images are put together. When you're dealing with billions of satellite images, mistakes can happen. But come on, pull the other one, sunshine. I can understand if occasionally two sections of road don't quite meet up with each other, or the perspective on two skyscrapers is a bit wonky, but this is plane in a car park. If my new friend had tried to persuade me that some smart arse on the Google mothership was just trying to mess with my head by adding Mig-21 fighters to ordinary urban scenes then I might be more willing to entertain his suggestions. But this is ridiculous. Artifact my arse.

Having said that we can't find anyone who can actually claim to having seen any high class military fighter planes hanging around in German car parks. Who is it up there who's doctoring these photos?

--UPDATE-- I've received this message from a 'photo interpreter':

Careful observation of the 'fighter in a car park' reveals the shadow of the plane beneath it. This shows incontovertibly that the aircraft was several metres off the ground when the image was taken. This in fact shows a rare example of the MiG 21V vertical take off fighter landing on its camoflaged airfield in Eastern Germany. I hope none of your readers were taken in by the ridiculous suggestion that fighter planes are stored in car parks. Even the long-stay tickets are far too expensive. Yours sincerely Ann Orak

Well this has put the cat amongst my pigeons. Firstly the red van in the top right corner of the picture must also be several metres off the ground, which is impressive even for the Germans. Secondly, and more perplexingly, how did a East German camouflaged airfield end up near Cologne virtually on the western border. I'm sticking by my "Google man monkeys with Google images" hypothesis.

You can find this on Google Earth, or probably any other of those satellity sites, at the following grid reference: 51^o 21' 44.41'' N; 7^o 33' 28.51'' E.

Back to the Top Ten Google Earth Images

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