LOST VEGAS: Forgotten WWII Relics Hiding in Plain Sight

Posted on: February 28, 2025, 07:36h. 

Last updated on: March 2, 2025, 05:38h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.
  • Eight giant triangles are carved into the desert north of Las Vegas
  • They represent one of the only permanent marks left on Las Vegas by WWII

You have to know where to look using Google Earth. And even when you find them, you have to crank the contrast really high to make them out through the decades of erosion. But there they are: eight giant earthen triangles — big enough to fit one Fashion Show mall each — stretching five miles from end to end.

What made these triangles in the Las Vegas desert and why? (Image: Google Earth)

Civilians can’t view them up close, since the formations are part of a small-arms shooting range for Nellis Air Force Base today. But they are the relics of the Las Vegas Army Air Corp Gunnery School, a precursor to Nellis that trained soldiers to fight in WWII.

Ironically, they are just 20 minutes north of the Las Vegas Strip, where no history gets preserved.

The firing line for the gunnery’s triangles, complete with a schematic labeling its components, is pictured in October 1944. (Image: Nellis Air Force Base)

The school, which operated from 1941 to 1945, took advantage of the region’s year-round good flying weather, as well as its ample supply of mountains to shoot into and dry lakebeds to land on.

It trained about 45K gunners and 9K pilots in all, using the actual aircraft they would fly into combat — B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.

But first, the gunners had to train on the ground. The triangles were actually dirt tracks where scale-model airplanes mounted on unmanned Jeeps would circle (or whatever you call moving along a triangle) at 25 mph.

Gunnery students aimed at the planes from turrets suspended on truck beds on the firing line, simulating the cramped conditions inside the B-17.

In March 1945, the school converted to B-29 bombers, and its enrollment peaked at nearly 5,000 students.

The nearest structure to the eight triangles today is the North Las Vegas VA Medical Center. This begs the question of whether any patients ever stared out of their hospital-room windows not realizing they were gazing at the very ground on which they once trained. (Image: Google Earth)

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended “the war to end all wars,” the gunnery school served a new role — processing servicemen returning to civilian life. In early 1947, it was decommissioned along with the army base. Three years later, it came back on line as Nellis under the brand new US Air Force, though the tracks were abanodoned.

The triangles were tracks where mockup planes, mounted to moving unmanned Jeeps, would be fired upon by soldiers learning how to operate machine guns. (Image: Wikipedia)

Little remains of that massive wartime effort, beyond the forgotten triangles in the desert. One is partially erased by what looks to be a flood control project.

Appropriately, the only way to see these giant relics of Las Vegas’ wartime past is from the sky.

“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.