Today's pilots navigate by satellite and with precision instruments, but a century ago the aviation industry lacked reliable maps and aids. The National Air Marking program, led by a team of elite women pilots, coordinated painters and volunteers to add the name of a town and its airport to rooftops, barns, towers, and fields in letters large enough to be read from high above. By WWII tens of thousands of these aerial road signs were in place and some remain even in our digital age.

Your speaker, Roger A. Mola (HUMEC '83) is retired after 20 years as a photo researcher and video editor  for Smithsonian.