The Markeroni Blog
The blog of Markeroni, the Gentle Art of Landmark-Snarfing

Today, we can hop a red-eye airline flight to just about anywhere in the world. A plane flying at night is not seen as being much of a problem with technologies such as radios, radar and GPS navigation.

80 years ago, it was a different story. Aviation was mostly a daylight activity. There was radio but it hadn’t been developed for use in navigation yet. Radar was still 20 years in the future and the idea of launching something like a GPS satellite into space was the realm of HG Wells and Jules Verne.

The United States mail service was looking for ways to shorten delivery times and airmail was put into use as a quick way to move letters around. The problem was that airplanes could only fly during the day as they couldn’t navigate easily in the dark. To solve the problems with flying at night, a network of light towers, called airway beacons, was constructed across the country along pre-designated flight paths.

The first tower was installed in Moline, IL on Dec. 7, 1926. Within seven years, there were 1,550 towers guiding planes over 18,000 miles of flight paths.

Every ten miles initially, and later, fifteen miles as lighting technology improved, along a flight path was one of the airway beacon towers. The tower was topped with a rotating light and a pair of fixed lights, one pointing toward each of the next towers in the line. Most of the lights were red, indicating a tower location only. Some of the towers had an emergency airfield located next to the tower. These were indicated by a green light.

For over 20 years, the lights guided America’s growing air transportation system. By the 1950s, technology had made the system obsolete and most of the airway beacons were removed from service.

Some airway beacons do remain in service, however. The FAA transferred 14 towers to the State of Montana in the 1970s and they are still maintained and in use today.

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