Sixty years ago, cold-war games halted all civilian air traffic—long before September 11 did the same.

Location and date tentative - Pending room confirmation after 8/21/25

After the terrorist attacks in September 2001 all civil aircraft in the U.S. and Canada were grounded, with devastating effects on commerce and travel. The media said this was the first time in history that civil aircraft were grounded.  But in fact, it was not.

Follow along with retired Smithsonian researcher Roger Mola as he tells the forgotten story of how, during the height of the Cold War, a series of National Defense exercises were held each fall from 1960 to 1962 by the North American Air Defense Command,  U.S. Air Force, and our British and Canadian allies to test our national defense against a simulated aerial attack.  During “Operation Skyshield” all airlines and private aircraft in the continental U.S. and Canada were grounded during a simulation of an aerial attack. “Operation Skyshield” became front-page news as it affected nearly all facets of travel, commerce, and civil defense in North America.  To this day, it remains the largest such exercise ever held with live assets and personnel rather than computer simulation. Yet its results and lessons were censored and eventually forgotten, and its procedures and methods largely reinvented on the fly during the actual air attacks of 2001. 

Did “Operation Skyshield” work, and why was it forgotten in history?  

Your speaker, Roger A. Mola (HUMEC '83) is a researcher and video editor retired from Smithsonian/Air & Space Magazine. He has more than 1,000 published articles in aviation and aerospace spanning history, technology, and business. In 2002 Roger was honored as Aviation Journalist of the Year in the category of Breaking News, for his coverage of the National Airspace System after the attacks of September 2001 forced a national grounding of traffic, comparing it to previous groundings during the 1960s defense exercise Operation Skyshield. 

Questions: Contact Roger Mola. rmola1@yahoo.com