What's That Giant Concrete Arrow on the Ground?

 I feel like I've been kind of in a rut as far as my blog is concerned.  Lately it has been mostly boat and airplane pictures.  For a while, I was researching topics to look up and go take pictures of.  Today, I decided to go take pictures of a topic that has been sitting on the back burner for a while.

A few years ago, I clicked on one of those articles that had odd stuff like this.

Apparently, these arrows used to litter the landscape and at a time they were used as aids to navigation.

They were only used for a short period of time but because of their construction,  many of them still stand.

I figured I would start with some ground shots because it still looks pretty cool from the ground.

If you followed this arrow, it would lead you to Chicago, I think.  I think these arrows are about 6 feet wide and about 15 feet wide.  For some reason, I thought it would be larger.  But then I figured that a plane back then would be going about 150 mph and flying at about 1,000 to 3,000 feet high.

In 1923, Congress funded a lighted airway that followed the transcontinental airmail route.  Prior to the installation of these lights, the planes would have to land before it turned dark and the mail was transferred to a train where it would take the mail to the next airport where another plane would pick it up and take it to the next destination.

Navigation at this time would rely on using compasses and figuring out how far you traveled in a period of time.  If you got lost, you could re-locate yourself by using a landmark.  There are vast stretches of this country where there isn't a landmark close enough in an emergency.

That's where these arrows came into place.

These arrows were spaced about 10 miles apart.  Many of them had a 50 beacon on them.  The beacons would light up at night.  Because their spacing, a pilot could see the next arrow and could follow them to his destination.

The beacons had a red light to distinguish them from the green lights used by the airports.  The beacons would also flash a letter in Morse code.   By looking at that code, a pilot knew where he was.

The sequence of the letters was "WUVHRKDBGM" which you could use the mnemonic "When Undertaking Very Hard Routes Keep Directions By Good Methods" to remember the order of the letters.

These arrows were more common in the desert arrows because of the fewer landmarks.  This particular arrow was on the Cincinnati to Chicago airway.  These ended up stretching from New York to Salt Lake City and eventually to San Francisco.  North-South routes were also formed.

By 1933, the system had 1500 beacons and covered 18,000 miles (which meant 1,800 arrows, roughly).  But also by the time the system was complete, improved tools of navigation using radio towers and radar were coming into being.

Many of these arrows were removed during World War II because it was feared that enemy bombers would use them for navigation.  Many of the towers were used for scrap metal during World War II.  If I had been paying attention, I would have realized there was an intact beacon in Ohio.  But maybe that is another project.

Anyway, I talked to the people that owned this property and they said that a few years ago, the government wanted to take it out but they wanted to keep it.  It does represent a unique part of our aviation history.  It's hard to imagine there was a time that these things were useful but they were.