Kind: captions
Language: en
I found this image on Reddit recently.
It's a satellite image of planes closely
packed together somewhere in the world.
The post asks if anyone has any details
on this jumble of airliners in Tyran.
So, we've been told the image is from
Tyran and Iran. But what are these
planes doing here? And why are they like
this? Well, over the next few minutes,
we're going to find out more details by
searching for photos taken on the ground
and using the clues in those photos to
find out what type of planes these are,
how long they've been there for, and
what's happening in this Iranian
airplane
[Music]
graveyard. Hi everyone, I'm Ben and
welcome back to this channel on
open-source investigative techniques.
You can find all of the links mentioned
in this tutorial as well as resources
and more in the description below.
Otherwise, let's get started. This
specific post on Reddit isn't actually
unique. I've seen this image a couple of
other times. One thing I can do just to
double check that is I could pull up the
image in Google Lens and have a look for
some of the visual matches. You can see
I've just done that here and already we
can see that it's not the only time that
this image has been posted. So there
seems to be a lot of hype about what
this image shows. Obviously I mean it is
a fascinating image, right? So let's
have a deeper look at it. Well, first of
all, we know that the image is in Tan.
Uh someone has actually posted a
location of it. If we go to Tyran,
there's basically one airport there and
we can go to Thran and this is
specifically the Mehabad International
Airport and we can see the planes right
there. Before going to look for any
photos or any other sources of footage
on the ground and identifying the
planes, the first thing I want to have a
look at is what about other satellite
images to see whether this is a new
phenomena or whether this has been
around for quite some time. The way we
do that is by going to Google Earth. I'm
going to open up my Google Earth and go
to that location I just copied and
pasted from Google Maps. And there we
have the location in Google Earth. I'm
going to open up my historical slider
and start going back in time to see
historical imagery. As you can see, I'm
already in
2021 and we can still see those planes.
They seem to be still quite jumbled up.
Some of these are quite squashed around
here. And if we keep going back, we can
still see them plenty of dates back.
Seems like some of those planes are even
there as far back as
2015. Some even
2014, maybe even 2013. There's a lot
less. So, it looks like we've got those
planes. It's a fair indication that
they've been around for quite a few
years, at least 10 years. Okay, back to
our Google Maps. The first way I'm going
to look for imagery from the ground is
by using our trusty companion right
here, Google Maps. The way I'm going to
do this is by scrolling around on some
of these areas. I might even bring up
something called Google Street View,
which is by clicking this little person
down in the bottom right here. It says
browse street view images. What that
does is it picks up all of the straight
blue lines, which are Google Street View
images, but also these 360° photos
represented as little blue dots on the
map. We can actually see that we have
one of those right here. Let's click it
open and see what it looks
like. If I turn around, hey, we can see
some planes. Well, that's quite
interesting. Let me just orientate
myself using my Google Earth because we
want to know where we're looking at
here. What I can see is that big blue
hanger, maybe a plane in front of me,
the wings coming over, a green area, and
we've got some planes here and some
planes over there as well. And don't
forget, the photo kind of looked like it
was taken back here. If we can see that
little blue dot right there, looks like
it might have been taken down this
alleyway here. So, let's orientate
ourselves on Google Earth. We'll go to
that location. It seemed like we were in
this lane right here. And already I can
see that large hanger over here. And
maybe I'm looking down here somewhere.
Note that this image was taken in August
2022. So, I'll just quickly scroll back
to
2022 to August. Remember that we had a
wing going over this bush here and a
little shelter right here. Green area
and shelter right here. That's quite
useful. So now we can see the angle that
we were looking at with that large uh
hanger, the blue hanger, this plane, and
this little plane in front of it. Okay.
So the one that I'm seeing is this
little plane right here. Probably this
one. And that means we've got an angle.
What's interesting about that is that if
we zoom in over here, we've got some
planes. Woohoo. This is our first photo
that we've been able to identify of
those planes on the ground. But I'm sure
we can go a bit further. Well, since
this person has uploaded this photo,
maybe they've uploaded some others. What
I'm going to do is rightclick and open
link in new tab. And this will take me
to the page where that person has
uploaded perhaps a couple of other
photos as well. We can see that this
person has taken another photo even more
recently in January 2024. Again, we can
see those planes. We might even be able
to see them in a bit more detail as
well. Uh what I'm looking for is
registration numbers at the moment. I
can't really see too many of those of
the distant ones over there. Maybe
something up there, but it's not too
clear for me. You can see that this
person loves taking extra photos.
They've been polite enough to take a
lovely photo of engine parts within what
is to be quite a large triangular shaped
roof factory, a double one. Uh, okay.
So, that's the extent of some of those
photos. Let's continue our hunt for the
other photos that might be available on
Google Maps. I noticed that when I was
looking around, we also had some
businesses around here. Osman Air
Service Company and we had one down
here. Iran Asaman Airline Company. Even
a little restaurant that's oddly placed
right there. Seems to be a bit out of
place. I might have a look at this one.
Iran Asaman Airline headquarters again.
Going through that same process. I'm
going to have a look at some of these
photos. There's some pretty good
closeups around here. None of them in
the exact location that I want. We can
see that some of these are taken by the
same person. So again, right click, open
tab, and I might check out this person's
Google photos that they've uploaded to
Google Maps. Now, we can see that
there's a lot of photos that have been
taken here. Here we have one interesting
photo. If we go back to our Google
Earth, we can orientate ourselves. Not
only do we have these amazing mountains
in the background, I'm sure that took
your attention right there, but we also
have these two buildings right here,
Iran Air, and then we have another one,
which is another boxy kind of one. And
they're both connected with this little
kind of gray frame here. I can actually
see that we have two very similar
buildings here. One with the logo on the
front. I think it's the uh the horse
bird thing, Iran Air. We can even see
the writing. And we have another one
here. And we have that frame right
there. And these are our planes that we
were looking at in the original image
over here. So I'm just going to
orientate myself. It's always good to
verify the exact location that you're
looking from. So, what we can see
permanent structures. One thing that
sticks out to me is this little roof
right here in front of this uh sandy
grassy kind of area in the middle of the
of the apron. So, if we go back here,
we've got a sandy area in the middle of
this kind of runway bit or or or
driveway bit. Go back a bit that little
building and there it is. Okay. So, I'm
going to orientate my angle. One of the
things I noticed in this picture was a
lovely big green tree. We can see that
on the left there. And if we look a
little bit careful past this dusty
patch, we can see a nice big round green
tree. Well, that's really helpful for us
to then start to think about these
planes right here. So, we can see that
the end of this tail fin up here has the
letters C F. that could be useful and we
might be able to actually search for
something like that. This one over here
seems to have an EP in there and also is
an Iran Airplane. It's got the same
logo. This one might be a BG maybe. Um,
if we scroll out, we can also see
there's an EF over here. So, they all
seem to have these these two letters at
the top. I might try the EP one over
here. So, I'm going to go to my Google
Iran
Air dash. See what we get here. Okay.
So, flight history aircraft seems to be
a registration code EP. What else could
we do with that? Um, most of them seem
to have I.
So, maybe I FA JC. Let's just have a
quick look at this one. This is on
flight radar. This is EPIGA.
have a look at the full and this has JA
on the end. So it might be the case that
they end the last two uh uh letters uh
of the of the
registration are actually on the tail
fin. So that could be helpful. So maybe
the search term I should be using is
something like EP and what's our
details? We've got uh over here CF ICF.
So, Iran Air
EPCF. Now, we have
EPICF. That's super helpful. It seems
like this plane's uh still or or was
getting around at some point. Here is
Iran Airbus
A300 203. We've got plenty of photos
here. Converted 1999 A300 B4. This is
EPICF. That's the one. It's an A300 B4
withdrawn from use and stored at Thran
Meabad in 2014. Well, that's super
helpful to know. So, this has now been
withdrawn from use. That plane uh this
one specifically has been withdrawn from
use. So, the one with the registration
CF, which is likely this one over
here, and it has been withdrawn from use
and it is now stored there. So, those
are some interesting details that we've
got. We might actually be able to find
some more photos uh since 2014. So, I'm
going to do any time custom range. I
might do from
2018. There's a photo of something
there. This is from the same site I was
just looking at
before. Uh it shows a lot of old photos,
but it also shows a photo like this one.
So, this is apparently attached to it.
this one as well. EP ICF. So, this is
the cockpit of the plane that we were
just looking at. Uh, this appears to be
maybe the side engine. A little bit more
details that was taken in 2018 in
August. So, at least we have one plane.
We can now confirm that that plane is
withdrawn out of use or decommissioned.
The wording that they used on this one
was also quite interesting on the
registration details. While looking
around at EPICF that plane, I also found
another image uh that we have. This one
specifically relates to uh an A300
B4. We can see the image of it here. And
again can see
the that kind of location or that angle
uh of this image. That's useful because
it gives us a super clear image. We've
also got
EPCFH. EPCFH. Here it is. There it is
right there. Uh, and there it is.
Probably decommissioned. Let's have a
look at this image. We can see this one
on the ground. Let's just double check
the background. So, we've got this kind
of red and white here. We can see if
that's in the image. And yes, we can see
that there. So, this plane, when was the
photo taken of this one? photo date,
April
2015. Again, if we scroll back to 2015,
it's quite some time ago. We might be
able to see it. It's actually looks like
it's quite against the wall and quite
straight there. Could be this one right
here. I think it's this one exactly
there. So, that doesn't look like it's
flying anytime soon. And we can start to
get an idea of at least what these
planes are, right? So, it looks like a
lot of these are decommissioned. They've
been stripped for parts, maybe engine
parts, or maybe they're just not
serviced anymore as well. And we're
starting to find more and more, right?
So, I think we have another one here.
This is a Fauler 100. It seems to be
giving us similar images now from
Google. Um, this one was in or this
photo was there. Uh if we go down
here, you can see this
image again to confirm that we've got
this red and white tower. I think that's
the same red and white tower that we
were looking at here. This image was
taken uh in 2015 on April. Again, same
kind of thing
um in front of a blue thing there. Here
we are. We've got another plane in front
of
it. So, it might be this one right here.
And again, that also doesn't look like
it's flying anytime soon. That's CFL.
So, it looks like most of these are
definitely out of commission. Okay. So,
thanks to this image, we've really gone
ahead and identified uh quite a few of
these planes
already. Just a few of the other tricks
that I would have used to uh identify
some of these some of these planes or at
least look for content on the ground. So
I would have also have gone to uh social
media outlets. For example, I would have
gone to Twitter and done a geocode
search. So this is a geocode search
using coordinates from the location.
What we would have done is gone to this
location, taken these coordinates. Pop
them in after the term
geocode and paste them in there. You can
also search for 0.5 kilometers. It won't
give you much. And you can also search
two kilometers and you can go quite
further out as well. Right, this is a
useful way to find any old Twitter
content or or relatively recent
specifically content on X uh that might
have been posted around or within a
certain location and it might identify
other photos. Even uh Iran Air is asking
where. don't have to do that because
this is a geotagged post and they could
have just geoloccated that like what we
have. The other function I would have
used is wiki mappier. So wiki mappier is
an open source community approach to
mapping. It has an incredible amount of
details. For example, someone has gone
through and mapped basically every
single thing you can see uh at this uh
Iranian airport, the Mehnabad
International Airport. What we can see
on Google is very different to the
content that you can see on Wiki Mapia.
And if we zoom in on that area with lots
of our planes, it looks like someone's
actually gone through and identified a
lot of these. Maybe they've seen the
photos on the ground, too, or maybe
they've just identified them because
they're really good at spotting planes
on a satellite image. The other tool I
would have used to find uh content on
the ground is also MW Geo Find. I
actually did a video on this quite some
time ago. Basically, all you do is find
your location, drop a pin. Uh, I've
dropped this down to 1 kilometer for a
smaller radius. You search for your
content. So, just click submit. It'll
start
loading channels or video IDs that have
been geo tagged to a location
specifically uploaded on YouTube. So,
this deals with YouTube content only.
But you can see that some of these will
actually have footage either filmed
while landing or filmed while taking off
as well. So it's another really good way
just to find uh footage on the ground or
around an area where you might only have
say for example a satellite image. And
again these are just different ways that
you can find that content on the ground
to help you answer some of these
questions. And those questions that we
had are, you know, basically like this.
Did we have any details on this jumble
of airliners in Tan? Yeah. Well, we can
just completely say that a lot of these
appear to be decommissioned or out of
service planes. They're missing engines.
They're missing critical parts that stop
them from flying. Uh they've been
they've been there for quite some time.
So this is an airplane graveyard maybe
being cannibalized for other parts to be
used in in in other planes. But what we
can definitely say is that this is an
airplane graveyard and we've got the
proof. So we're not just saying it. We
can actually show the proof as well.
Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed
this session. If you've got any other
details about this image or any
questions about any other images that
you might be curious about that you've
seen online, please pop them in the
comments section below and I'll see you
very soon.