Quickly following up on their new 3D Ocean Floor in Google Earth 5.0, Google has been populating the ocean with a unique set of 3D models of famous shipwrecks, reefs, and other objects. To tour these models, you can open the 3D Ocean Models Tour.
Near and dear to EarthNC’s heart is the included model for the USS Oriskany Aircraft Carrier that was sunk off the coast of Northwest Florida in May of 2006. We watched the sinking 1st hand from our 28′ Regal cruiser 27 miles offshore from our home port of Fort Walton Beach Florida. Our coverage of the sinking was the first major story of our new boating blog DestinSharks.com and eventually led to the founding of EarthNC two years ago to market Nautical Products for Google Earth.
To commemorate the new 3D Oriskany model, we’ve published our own special Sinking of the USS Oriskany KML file for Google Earth. Our KML includes the embedded video of the sinking, the ‘official’ location of the Oriskany as provided by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and our boat’s GPS track while filming.
If you plan to visit the USS Oriskany by boat, we recommend you not use the 3D model location as it appears to be off by nearly a mile from the published location. The model is quite realistic, but has a couple of minor errors. The hangar elevators where removed prior to sinking and the large radar dome on the aft island superstructure floated free during the sinking.
