A Little Fact Checking

A few days ago I received an e-mail with the subject:

” WHAT PILOTS SEE WHEN LANDING AT OFFIT AIRFORCE BASE SAC”


The e-mail had the following images attached:

I am very skeptical of anything I get in an e-mail forward. Skeptical to the point that I assume it is 100% faked unless I can go find a few independent sources to verify whatever the forward is telling me. The fact that they misspelled “Offutt” didn’t lend any credibility to the e-mail.

So… I looked around. The hard part about this e-mail is that there wasn’t much text to work with. Typically you can just plug the first sentence of the e-mail into a Google search and get a lot of information about the origins of the urban legend. (I am skeptical for a reason… maybe 1 in the last 100 forwards turned out to be true)

After not finding anything that looked particularly reputable, I realized: “Hey, I know where Offutt AFB is, and I know a great source for aerial photography!”

Google Maps

I checked a few other sources and the field appears to be blank, and as you can see from the Google image, the message isn’t the same, but I think we at least see that it is apparently true that somebody carves some really neat messages into the fall stubble at the end of the runway.

-Jordan

3 thoughts on “A Little Fact Checking

  1. I have seen this field. It is true that they write a message, it is pretty cool, and you can actually read it from the road when you drive by (kinda hard, but still really cool!)

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  2. Ha! I guess I didn’t even need to look at Google Maps I could have just consulted a few of the locals (or former locals) πŸ™‚

    Pretty cool stuff, glad to know it’s actually being done!

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