Wiley Post and the one-eyed Oklahoma farm boy who flew around the world twice and discovered the jet stream

Wiley Post, a one-eyed Oklahoma farm boy with an eighth-grade education, flew around the world twice in the 1930s, discovered the jet stream through practical experience, and commissioned the first functional pressure suit in aviation history. His contributions directly shaped pressurized flight, autopilot technology, and even the space suits that went to the Moon.

From Oilfield Roughneck to Record-Setting Pilot

Wiley Post was born in 1898 in Grand Plain, Texas, and raised in rural Oklahoma. He saw his first airplane at a county fair and became consumed by flight. But his path to the cockpit came through the oil rigs, where he worked as a roughneck.

A metal chip from a bolt struck him in the left eye, requiring its removal. He was 28 years old. Most people would have taken the $800 insurance settlement and bought land. Post bought a Canuck — a Canadian-built Curtiss Jenny — and taught himself to fly with one eye and no depth perception.

He compensated by using ground references, shadow lengths, and sight pictures from the side window. Where conventional wisdom said depth perception was essential for judging flare height, Post simply adapted.

The Winnie Mae and the First Around-the-World Record

Post earned his transport license and went to work for Oklahoma oilman F.C. Hall, who owned a Lockheed Vega — a high-wing monoplane with a plywood fuselage that could outrun nearly anything in the sky. The airplane was named the Winnie Mae after Hall’s daughter, and Post came to know every rivet and cable.

On June 23, 1931, Post and navigator Harold Gatty departed Roosevelt Field on Long Island in the Winnie Mae. They returned 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes later, beating the Graf Zeppelin’s circumnavigation record by more than 12 days.

The route ran across the North Atlantic, through Europe, across Siberia, over to Alaska, and back through Canada. They landed on dirt strips in places that barely had names, refueled from drums shipped months in advance, and navigated by stars and dead reckoning over territory with no usable radio navigation.

Flying Around the World Solo

Post wasn’t satisfied with a team record. In 1933, he took the Winnie Mae around the world again — alone.

He installed one of the first Sperry autopilots, a crude gyroscopic device that could hold wings level and maintain a rough heading. He called it “Mechanical Mike.” He also rigged a system where a weight on a string would bump his finger if the nose dropped too far, waking him up.

The result: 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes. He beat his own record by more than 21 hours. One eye, one engine, one man against the full circumference of the Earth.

How Wiley Post Discovered the Jet Stream

During his around-the-world flights, Post experimented with altitude. The Winnie Mae could reach roughly 25,000 feet, and at those heights, Post noticed something extraordinary: the airplane’s ground speed didn’t match its airspeed. Something was pushing him — a river of high-altitude wind that no one had properly documented.

Post had stumbled into the jet stream. Meteorologists had theorized about high-altitude wind patterns, but no one had practical flight experience in them. Post became obsessed with flying higher and faster, riding these invisible currents across continents.

The First Pressure Suit in Aviation History

Flying at extreme altitudes presented an obvious problem: humans can’t breathe at 30,000 feet, and blood boils above 63,000 feet without pressurization. Post’s solution put him decades ahead of his time.

He commissioned the B.F. Goodrich Company to build a pressure suit — the first practical pressure suit in aviation history. The design used three layers: long underwear, a rubber bladder, and an outer layer of rubberized parachute fabric. A round aluminum helmet with a small porthole window completed the assembly. The gloves were so thick Post could barely grip the control stick. The suit was pressurized by a supercharger bleed from the engine.

The first two suits burst during testing. The third held, and in 1934 and 1935, Post made a series of flights in the Winnie Mae at altitudes above 40,000 feet. He recorded ground speeds of 340 miles per hour in an airplane that normally cruised at 170. The jet stream was doubling his speed.

NASA traces a direct lineage from Post’s Goodrich suit to the pressure suits worn on the Apollo Moon missions.

The Fatal Crash at Barrow, Alaska

In the summer of 1935, Post was surveying a mail and passenger route from the West Coast to Russia via the great circle route over Alaska and Siberia. He’d assembled a hybrid aircraft — a Lockheed Orion fuselage on Sirius floats — for water landings along the route. The airplane was noticeably nose-heavy with the oversized floats. Post dismissed the concerns.

His passenger was Will Rogers, America’s most beloved humorist and entertainer. The two Oklahomans had become friends, and Rogers wanted material for his newspaper column.

On August 15, 1935, they landed on a lagoon about 15 miles south of Barrow, Alaska, to ask directions from local Inupiat seal hunters. After getting their bearings, they took off again. At roughly 50 feet of altitude, the engine quit.

Nose-heavy, at low altitude, with no engine power, the airplane pitched forward and dove into the shallow lagoon. Both men were killed instantly. Wiley Post was 36 years old.

A witness named Clair Okpeaha ran 10 miles on foot to Barrow to radio the news. President Roosevelt issued a statement within the hour. The nation had lost two of its most recognized figures in a single moment on a remote Arctic shore.

Why Wiley Post Matters

Post lacked the polish of Lindbergh and the connections of Howard Hughes. What he had was stubbornness, an airplane he knew intimately, and relentless curiosity about what existed above the weather. With those tools, he:

Proved the jet stream was real and exploitable for faster flight
Pioneered the autopilot as a practical tool for long-distance aviation
Created the foundation for every pressure suit and space suit that followed
Set two around-the-world speed records in a single-engine wooden airplane

The Winnie Mae now sits in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in the main gallery — a plywood Lockheed Vega in purple and white, looking too small and too fragile to have carried a one-eyed pilot around the world. But she did it twice.

Key Takeaways

Wiley Post lost his left eye in an oilfield accident at 28, used the $800 insurance payout to buy his first airplane, and taught himself to fly without depth perception
He set the around-the-world speed record twice — first with a navigator in 1931 (8 days, 15 hours) and then solo in 1933 (7 days, 18 hours) — using one of the first autopilots
Post’s high-altitude flights provided the first practical proof of the jet stream, recording ground speeds double his airspeed above 40,000 feet
He commissioned the first functional aviation pressure suit from B.F. Goodrich, a design NASA considers a direct ancestor of the Apollo space suits
Post and Will Rogers were killed on August 15, 1935, when their hybrid floatplane lost engine power at low altitude near Barrow, Alaska