BROOKLYN, NY (WHTM) — Aviator Wiley Post was itching to set a new world record. The 1920s and 1930s were a prime period for testing the limits of aircraft, and performance records were set, smashed, then smashed again.
Aviator Wiley Post. Post lost his left eye in an accident, and wore either a glass eye or an eyepatch. (Library of Congress) 
The Lockheed Vega plane that was christened by Winnie Mae Fain, and named Winnie Mae in her honor, is shown following the ceremony at Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., May 30, 1931. Wiley Post and Harold Gatty will fly the Winnie Mae around the world in seven days. (AP Photo) 
Pilot Wiley Post, left, with his navigator Harold Gatty in front of the plane in which they are to attempt to fly around the world in ten days in June 1931. They have left Roosevelt Field for Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in their first stage. (AP Photo) 
Harold Gatty navigator of the plane Winnie Mae, being escorted by police from Roosevelt Field in New York, USA after the completion of the world record flight in which he encircles the globe with pilot Wiley Post, around July 1, 1931. (AP Photo) 
Wiley Post takes his plane Winnie Mae of Oklahoma on a test flight over New York City, July 4, 1933. Post is preparing for his transatlantic flight. The Chrysler Building is at right of the plane. The Empire State Building is in background at left. (AP Photo) 
Wiley Post climbs out of the cockpit of his Lockheed Vega monoplane, Winnie Mae, after completing the first solo flight around the world at Floyd Bennet Field, Long Island, N.Y., midnight, July 22, 1933. Wiley set a new record with the distance of 15,596 miles, 25,099 kilometer, in 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes. (AP Photo) 
Wiley Post waves from an open car during a tickertape parade in his honor up Broadway from Battery Park to City Hall, where he will be greeted by the mayor, in New York City on July 26, 1933. Post made the first solo flight around the world, from July 15 to 22, setting a new record with a distance of 15,596 miles, 25,099 kilometer, in 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes. (AP Photo) 
Wiley Post poses in his high altitude pressure suit near his airplane “Winnie Mae” prior to takeoff in an effort to break the altitude record in New York, 1934. Post, who helped design the suit with B.F. Goodrich engineers, holds his helmet that will make it possible for him to breath at high altitude. The record he wants to beat is 44,819 feet, set by the French pilot Lemoine. (AP Photo) 
Wiley Post tests his high altitude pressure suit as engineers inflate the suit before his flight on his plane, “Winnie Mae”, in New York, 1934. Post, who helped design the suit with B.F. Goodrich engineers, wants to break the record for airplane altitude of 44,819 feet set last year. (AP Photo) 
Wiley Post checks the propeller of his plane Winnie Mae before an altitude flight at Bartlesville, Okla., Sunday, Dec. 2, 1934. Weather conditions prevented Post from completing his attempt to fly to any unusual altitude. (AP Photo) 
Humorist Will Rogers gives his last interview at Fairbanks, Ala., Aug. 19, 1935, when he stopped here on the way to Point Barrow on the flight which ended in his death and that of Wiley Post. From left: Bernie Stone, editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner; Rogers and Joe Crosson, noted Alaska pilot who flew the bodies of Post and Rogers out from Point Barrow. (AP Photo) 
Humorist Will Rogers boards the plane of aviator Wiley Post shortly before take-off from Lake Washington, near Seattle, for a leisurely aerial tour of Alaska, on August 7, 1935. One week later, on August 15, 1935, the noted humorist and the famed aviator were killed when this powerful pontooned-equipped aircraft crashed about 15 miles south of Point Barrow in Alaska. (AP Photo) 
A plane, carrying aviator Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers, takes off from Lake Washington, near Seattle, for a leisurely aerial tour of Alaska, on August 7, 1935. One week later, on August 15, 1935, both men were killed when this powerful pontooned-equipped aircraft crashed about 15 miles south of Point Barrow in Alaska. (AP Photo) 
Will Rogers Wiley Post plane crash at Point Barrow, Alaska on Aug. 15, 1935. (AP Photo)
One of those records: the fastest time for flying around the world. In 1930 the record was held by a dirigible, the Graf Zeppelin, which made the trip in 21 days. Then in 1931 Wiley Post, accompanied by Australian navigator Harold Getty, took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island in Post’s single-engine Lockheed Vega, Winnie Mae. Eight days, 15 hours, 51 minutes, and 14 stops later, they returned to Roosevelt Field. Not only did they smash the previous record for flying around the world, but they were also the first to do it in a single-engine monoplane. The two were celebrated as heroes wherever they went.
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Post then set his sights on a new goal: become the first pilot to fly around the world solo. Advances in technology made this possible. When he left for this flight, the Winnie Mae carried some new devices — an autopilot and a radio direction finder — which, along with a compass, would allow him to make the trip without a human navigator.
He departed from Floyd Bennett Field on July 15, 1933. He made stops along the way at Berlin, Königsberg, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Rukhlovo, Khabarovsk, Flat, Fairbanks, and Edmonton, before returning to Floyd Bennett Fieldon on July 22. He made the trip in seven days, 18 hours, 49 minutes, making him the first pilot to fly solo around the world.
Having set not one, but two records for going around, Post then turned his attention to going up. In 1934, he worked with the B.F. Goodrich Company to develop the world’s first pressure suit, the ancestor to the suits worn by high-altitude pilots and spacesuits used by astronauts. With it, he was able to fly up to 50,000 feet, where he discovered the existence of the jet stream.
Ironically, after two record-setting trips around the world, and breaking barriers to high-altitude flight, he would lose his life making a simple takeoff. He and his friend, comedian, and columnist Will Rogers, were traveling in Alaska using a pontoon plane. Post was investigating a possible mail and passenger air route, and Rogers was finding material for his newspaper column. On August 15, near Point Barrow, Alaska, they were taking off from a lake when the engine failed. They crashed into the water and died instantly. Rogers is remembered as one of America’s most beloved humorists, and Post is remembered for his record-setting contributions to early aviation. Both his airplane Winnie Mae and his pressure suit are in the collection of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
