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Marine Corps’ NC air base undergoing big expansionPosted on: 10:05 am, March 5, 2012, by Ryan Sullivan MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. — The military’s big expansion in North Carolina continues as the Marine Corps builds a $140 million mega-hangar to hold four squadrons of a revolutionary aircraft. **SNIP** ...preparing to break ground on one of the Marine Corps’ largest single structures. The super hangar will house dozens of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Google supplied satellite photos recently revealed something the American military uses to help morale, but that they would rather keep secret. In this case it was a Batman style bat symbol painted on the roof of a hanger in a U.S. airbase (Kadena Air Force Base in Japan). There are actually a lot of these roof paintings, usually representing the squadron (the Batman symbol was for a fighter squadron known as the vampire bats.) Now that the pictures of this custom has gone viral, many more people will check Google Earth pictures of military bases, and publicize what they find....

CHANTILLY, United States (AFP) - The airplanes hung from the rafters have the allure of models in a child's bedroom, but each of the giant trusses holding them up could hold nine tonnes: the new National Air and Space Museum is a modeler's dream -- made life-size. AFP/File Photo   The giant hangar is "perhaps the largest room in the world," Smithsonian Institution (news - web sites) secretary Lawrence Small said. It contains the first copy of the space shuttle, the B-29 that first dropped an atomic bomb as a weapon and the supersonic Concorde airliner. The 311-million-dollar museum includes...