Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia
Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia is a British Ministry of Defence facility leased to the United States Navy, located on the atoll Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
A US Air Force B-1B Lancer taking off from Diego Garcia as part of Operation Enduring Freedom during October 2001. Five other B-1Bs are visible parked in the foreground.
Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a disputed overseas territory of the United Kingdom also claimed by Mauritius. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of the 60 small islands of the Chagos Archipelago. Portuguese sailors under Pedro Mascarenhas were the first Europeans to discover the island, finding it uninhabited in 1512. After a 1786 British colony failed, the French began using the island as a leper colony and, starting in 1793, coconut cultivation by enslaved labor. It was transferred to British rule after the Napoleonic Wars. It was one of the "Dependencies" of the British Colony of Mauritius until the Chagos Islands were detached for inclusion in the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in 1965.
Aerial photograph of Diego Garcia
Coconut plantation, East Point (former main settlement)
A Chagossian photographed by a US National Geodetic Survey team in 1969
Barachois Maurice, Diego Garcia