FM 21-25: Chapter 2
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FM 21-25: Chapter 1FM 21-25: Chapter 2FM 21-25: Chapter 3FM 21-25: Chapter 4FM 21-25: Chapter 5FM 21-25: Chapter 6FM 21-25: Chapter 7FM 21-25: Chapter 8FM 21-25: Chapter 9FM 21-25: Chapter 10FM 21-25: Chapter 11FM 21-25: Chapter 12FM 21-25: Chapter 13
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Air Fronts: FM 21-25, Elementary Map and Aerial Photograph Reading - CHAPTER 2. What Is a Map?

CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS A MAP?

A map is a picture. It isn't a puzzle and it isn't hard to read. It is a picture of the land and the things people have built on the land.

There are really only two things about a map which make it a little strange to read. In the first place, a map is flat and when we look at a map we are looking at a picture of the ground from a spot high in the air. That view is different from the one we have looked at all our lives, from one point on the ground to another point on the ground. So the first thing we must do is to understand where we sit when we look at this picture.

To give us an idea of what happens when we look at something from above, let's watch a football game and see what happens when we look at it from different seats. If we are on the player's bench, we see a picture like the one in figure 6.

Figure 6

From the grandstand, we see things a little differently.

Figure 7

The game looks something like the one in figure 7. If we climb into a blimp and rise up above the edge of the stadium, we see the game as in figure 8.

Figure 8

Now if our blimp takes us directly over the playing field, our football game looks as it does in figure 9. It is quite a different scene from what we saw from the sidelines.

Figure 9

Even though it is a strange way to look at a football game, our overhead view is not too confusing, because we are close enough to the ground to understand what we are looking at. But in map reading we are looking at something with many more details than a football game, and at an area much larger and not so near to us the land itself really looks strange from the air.

Figure 10

For example, from the ground we see the land as in figure 10. In figure 11 we see the land as we rise a little into the air. In figure 12 we have risen higher into the air, and, finally, figure 13 shows us what the land looks like from directly above it.  That, then, is the first thing to remember about maps.

Figure 11

Figure 12

Maps are views of things from directly above. 

Figure 13

 

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