Straits of Tiran

Ship passing through the Straits of Tiran - Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Al Reuters

Aljazeera tells us that the UN is withdrawing their peacekeeping force from the Straits of Tiran and installing cameras to keep an eye on things, so maybe things have calmed down here. But just where are the Straits of Tiran? So off to Google Maps we go.

Gulf of Aqaba

The Straits of Tiran are at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba where it joins the Red Sea. It's not a vital shipping lane, unless you are Israel or Jordan who both have ports at the northern end of the Gulf. Jordan has a large oil terminal there, which might be where the ship in the first photo is coming from.

I was surprised by Jordan's presence there. I shouldn't have been, Jordan forms Israel's entire eastern border except the most northern portion, but you never hear anything about Jordan, it's like it doesn't exist.

Straits of Tiran, Tiran and Sanafir Islands

The Straits of Tiran are narrow, only about two miles wide and there are reefs in the middle. The islands look pretty desolate, but on the western (Egyptian) shore we have a bunch of resorts.

Party at Jackson Reef
Island in the background is the same one as in the first photo

I am looking at some street view images hoping to find a view of the pier that is in the first photo on this post, and this pops up. At first glance it looks like a typical drunken boat party, but if you take in the whole 360 degree view you see that the boats are almost entirely empty.

Divers at Jackson Reef

Turns out they are dive boats for tourists from the resorts and all the people are underwater. The sea life on the reefs is pretty spectacular.

Piers

I wasn't able to locate the pier on Google Maps until I realized that there were lines crossing a large green area adjacent to the shore and I realized that it was shallow water, not land, and those lines were light duty piers suitable for people to walk on, not for freight.

P.S. I thought I had looked at this part of the world once before but I couldn't remember why. Then I clicked on the place mark on the resort and all was revealed. The Super Tucanos stopped there on their round the world delivery flight.

Mideast upheavals overrule the map

F-16 Fighting Falcons from the U.S. and Royal Jordanian air forces, as well as an F-18 Hornet from the U.S. Marine Corps, fly over the Wadi Rum desert, Jordan May 13, 2014, during Exercise Eager Tiger. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Roidan Carlson/Released). Note the irrigated fields.

Good overview of the Mideast mess, along with some historical perspective, from yesterday's paper. By Lee Keath and Ryan Lucas, Associated Press.

Secret Underground Airbases

I'm looking at the Military Photos dot net website this morning and there is a post talking about a military air base in Northwest Iraq, so I look it up on Google Maps and sure enough, there it is, until I zoom in for a closer look and then it disappears and is replaced by an image of the airport that was there before. Well, that's kind of curious, but not all that interesting. Let's see what else there is to see around here. I zoom out and notice a jag in the border with Jordan. Jordan is kind of a funny shaped country anyway, what with that "hatchet handle" (one of my school teachers' terms) sticking out to the East. Who knows why it is that way, but this jag is in the end of the handle, and it's not all that big, maybe 10 miles across. This is the middle of the desert. Why would anyone care where the fool border is way out here? Well, maybe there is something here worth quibbling over. Zoom in a bit and I find there is something, an old, abandoned air base. Look it up on Wikipedia and find that it is one of five built by the Yugoslavians 35 years ago. Okay, crazed despot has dreams of many giant airbases in the middle of nowhere. Why? No explanation for crazy. But in the Wikipedia article (and repeated in several similar articles on similar places) is this:

In addition, underground facilities that could shelter between four and ten aircraft on average were constructed. In order to build these the Yugoslavs used equipment and construction techniques identical to that use in underground oil-storage depots, additionally concealing the extension and the true purpose of the whole project. The underground facilities were all hardened to withstand a direct hit by a tactical nuclear bomb, buried up to 50 meters below the ground and consisted of the main aircraft "hangar" (consisting of two floors in several cases, connected by 40ts hydraulic lifts), connected with operations, maintenance, and logistical facilities via a net of underground corridors.

Well, that's just crazy, but when you are dealing with the military and paranoia, nothing is too far round the bend, so I go looking for confirmation. I don't find any, but I do find reports of underground airbases in Albania and China. Albania's look a little sad. Hard to tell about the Chinese. Well, they are inscrutable.