Journey in Google Earth

Last year, Laura Hillenbrand released a book titled “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption“, based on the life of Louis Zamperini (details on Amazon). The book has been very popular, quickly becoming a best-seller and recently being picked up by Universal Studios to be turned into a movie.

The life of Zamperini is amazing, and the book is excellent. Zamperini, a world-class runner that competed in the Berlin Olympics in 1936, is drafted into World War II. He fights a number of missions before his plane goes down and he’s trapped in a raft at sea. After 46 days at sea, he floats into the Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands, and he’s placed in various POW camps for the next few years.

In reading the book about his journey, I realized that it would pretty cool to track down his various missions and POW camps in Google Earth. I was right! However, I was unable to find a decent timeline of his life, so I spent a few hours researching it and created one myself. After that, I did more research to find all of those locations in Google Earth and ended up with a pretty cool file.

zamp-hawaii.jpg

The file includes locations from his early days (homes, school), the various places he went for military training, the Pacific missions he completed, the POW camps he was placed in, and the various stops on his journey home. You can download the KMZ file here to try it for yourself.

I had hoped that historical imagery might come into play with this, but the old imagery in the Pacific and Japan doesn’t go back nearly far enough (as opposed to Europe, where many locations have historical imagery dating back to the mid-1940’s). However, one good example was Hamilton Field, where he stopped over on his way to Hawaii. The present-day imagery no longer shows a runway, but if you switch to the 1993 imagery you can clearly see the runway still there.

hamilton-field.jpg

All of that being said, I’m sure the file isn’t perfect. If you make any corrections to it, please email me the updated version (mickey@gearthblog.com) and I’ll update this post.

The state of the Berlin Wall, 21 years later

It was exactly 21 years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell. In honor of that anniversary, Virtual Berlin has released a very impressive and comprehensive “3D Virtual City Model” using the Google Earth Plug-in.

berlin-wall.jpg

It allows you to view a ton of data about the wall, including some great comparisons between 1989 and today. They use 3D models, historical imagery, and a variety of other tools to make it incredibly feature-rich.

To view the city, simply visit their site and browse around.

Some additional information about the project, in their own words:

Where exactly did the Berlin Wall stand? Where were the checkpoints? Are any parts of the Berlin Wall left standing, and if so, where are they?

These are some of the questions asked by anyone interested in the most recent history of Berlin. The answers are provided by the official 3D virtual city model published by the Land of Berlin, which documents the exact course of the entire Berlin Wall.

The model shows the buildings currently standing in Berlin, highlighting the former course of the Wall through the city. It shows the high wall constituting the outside (Western) part of the Berlin Wall (Vorderlandmauer) and the low wall behind it to the East (Hinterlandmauer) as well as the border strip. The Brandenburg Gate is the starting point for a virtual 3D flight over Berlin that users can themselves direct. The menu allows users to locate fragments of the Berlin Wall and the former checkpoints. The documentation centers in Berlin and memorials are shown, as is the “Berlin Wall Historical Mile” and memorial sites designed by artists. Specially marked sites of the 3D presentation have been linked to further-reaching information.