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Janislawski was a prolifi c navigator who taught WWII pilots and assisted NASA with mapping the stars.

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Mary Janislawski, Navigational Instructor and for Sea, Air, and the Stars

By: JORDAN B. DARLING

On Oct. 12, 1956, Mary Tornich Janislawski completed the Optimum Navigation Course set forth by Headquarters, 1502nd Air Transport Wing Heavy (Mats) of the Department of the Air Force. Janislawski was a prolific navigator who spent her life training mariners, pilots, and astronauts on how to use celestial bodies for navigation. She was considered a bridge between traditional and tested methods with newer navigation methods.

Janislawski was born in San Francisco on June 9, 1908, to Italian and Yugoslavian immigrants. According to History.com, she was drawn to flight from an early age and spent her early childhood wearing an aviator helmet she sewed for herself from scraps of felt. By her 20s, she was working in a candy factory to put herself through the University of California, Berkley, where she earned degrees in mathematics and astronomy.

After graduation, she worked with Bay Area mariners before she was hired by Captain Philip Van Horn Weems, acclaimed designer of the Weems sextant. He had started a certification program for air navigation and hired Janislawski as the West Coast liaison and manager, according to the National Park Service website.

Other notable pilots from this program include Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in the Spirit of St. Louis.

In 1940 the New York Times declared Janislawski, the “most outstanding woman teacher of aerial navigation.”

In December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Janislawski was teaching at Stanford University before she left her post to teach WWII pilots how to plot their positions correctly.

She started at King City airport in Mesa Del Ray. She then moved on to Alameda Naval Air Station to train in the US Navy’s Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service program for celestial navigation.

She prepared Navy fliers for carriers and bases in the Pacific missions under radio silences, according to SOFREP, a mil-

On Board With Johnson by J.R. Johnson

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