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

Wiley Post, a one-eyed Oklahoma farm boy turned record-setting aviator, became the first pilot to fly solo around the world in 1933 and the first to deliberately fly in the jet stream. Along the way, he helped develop the first practical pressure suit in aviation history, a design that became the direct ancestor of every space suit worn by American astronauts. His nine-year flying career reshaped aviation technology in ways that still matter on every commercial flight today.

From Oil Fields to the Cockpit

Wiley Hardeman Post was born on November 22, 1898, on a farm near Grand Plain, Texas. His family relocated to southwestern Oklahoma, where Post saw his first airplane at a county fair around age fourteen. A barnstormer came through, and Post was finished with farming.

Flying lessons cost money the Post family didn’t have, so Wiley went to work roughnecking on oil drilling rigs. In 1926, a piece of metal flew off a bolt and struck him in the left eye. He was twenty-seven years old, and his dream of flying should have died right there.

Instead, Post took his workers’ compensation settlement of approximately $1,800 and bought his first airplane. With no depth perception, he taught himself to compensate by cocking his head and using motion parallax, judging distances by how fast objects moved relative to each other. He got good enough to start barnstorming and performing parachute demonstrations, eventually catching the attention of wealthy Oklahoma oilman F.C. Hall.

The Winnie Mae and the First World Record

Hall owned a Lockheed Vega, one of the defining aircraft of the late 1920s. A high-wing monoplane with a plywood fuselage so smooth it looked carved from a single piece of wood, it was fast, long-range, and elegant. Hall’s Vega was painted white and purple and named Winnie Mae after his daughter. He hired Post as his personal pilot.

In 1930, Post won the National Air Race from Los Angeles to Chicago, covering the distance in nine hours and nine minutes and beating the field by more than an hour.

Then Post set his sights higher. He wanted to fly around the world and break the existing record of twenty-one days, held by the Graf Zeppelin. He aimed to do it in under nine.

On June 23, 1931, Post and navigator Harold Gatty departed Roosevelt Field on Long Island, the same field Lindbergh had left four years earlier. They flew east through England, Germany, Russia, across Siberia, down to Alaska, and back across North America. In Siberia, the Winnie Mae sank to her belly in a muddy field, and local villagers had to pull her free with ropes. Post was so exhausted at points that he hallucinated in the cockpit, and Gatty had to physically shake him awake.

They completed the circuit in eight days, fifteen hours, and fifty-one minutes. Fifty thousand people met them at Roosevelt Field, followed by a ticker-tape parade in New York City.

Solo Around the World

Post wasn’t satisfied. Critics suggested Gatty had done the real navigational work, and that gnawed at him. He decided to do it again, alone.

For the 1933 attempt, Post equipped the Winnie Mae with two critical innovations. He worked with the Sperry Gyroscope Company to install one of the first autopilots ever used in an airplane, a gyroscope-driven device he called “Mechanical Mike” that could hold wings level and maintain a heading. He also carried a radio direction finder, cutting-edge technology at the time. Even his glass eye was custom-fitted with a suction cup to stay in place during turbulence.

On July 15, 1933, Post departed Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. Seven days, eighteen hours, and forty-nine minutes later, he returned, beating his own record by more than twenty-one hours. He had become the first person to fly solo around the world.

President Roosevelt invited him to the White House. For a brief window, Wiley Post was the most famous pilot on Earth.

Discovering the Jet Stream

During those around-the-world flights, Post had noticed something that didn’t add up. At high altitudes, the Winnie Mae was covering ground significantly faster than engine performance and reported winds could explain. Something in the upper atmosphere was pushing the airplane along.

In 1934 and 1935, Post began deliberate high-altitude flights, pushing the piston-engine Lockheed Vega above 40,000 feet, the flight levels where modern jets cruise. He did this in an unpressurized wooden airplane.

To survive at those altitudes, Post needed a pressure suit. Since none existed, he worked with the B.F. Goodrich Company to build one. The first two prototypes failed. The third worked: a rubberized fabric suit with a round aluminum helmet, fed by an external oxygen supply. It became the direct ancestor of every American space suit, from Mercury through Apollo and beyond.

On those flights, Post confirmed rivers of fast-moving air at high altitude, flowing generally west to east, with sustained winds exceeding 100 mph and sometimes reaching 200 mph. He had found the jet stream. He didn’t coin the term, but he was the first pilot to deliberately seek out and fly in these high-altitude wind currents and to recognize their significance for aviation.

Every time a dispatcher routes a flight to catch a tailwind at flight level 350, every time an airline saves fuel riding the jet stream from coast to coast, the principle traces back to Post’s high-altitude experiments in the Winnie Mae.

The Final Flight

In August 1935, Post and his close friend, humorist Will Rogers, set off on a flying trip through Alaska, headed for Point Barrow. Post was flying a hybrid aircraft: a Lockheed Orion fuselage mated with Sirius Explorer wings and fitted with pontoons. The configuration was nose-heavy, and several people had warned Post about the weight and balance.

On August 15, they took off from a small lagoon near Point Barrow. The engine quit shortly after takeoff. The heavy airplane plunged nose-first into shallow water. Both men were killed instantly. Wiley Post was thirty-six years old.

The deaths of two of America’s most beloved public figures sent shockwaves across the country. Congress authorized the naming of airports, monuments, and highways after both men. The Winnie Mae was donated to the Smithsonian Institution, where she remains on display today.

Nine Years That Changed Aviation

Post’s serious flying career spanned roughly 1926 to 1935, just nine years. In that time, he set world speed and circumnavigation records, advanced autopilot technology, discovered a fundamental feature of Earth’s atmosphere, and pioneered the pressure suit equipment that would eventually carry human beings into space. Every obstacle he encountered, from losing an eye to needing technology that didn’t exist, was simply a problem to solve on the way to the next flight.

Key Takeaways

• Wiley Post used his $1,800 workers’ compensation settlement from losing an eye to buy his first airplane, then taught himself to fly without depth perception.
• He set the around-the-world record twice: first with navigator Harold Gatty in 1931 (8 days, 15 hours), then solo in 1933 (7 days, 18 hours), using one of the first autopilots in aviation.
• Post discovered the jet stream during high-altitude flights above 40,000 feet in an unpressurized Lockheed Vega, identifying the high-altitude wind currents that modern aviation depends on daily.
• He co-developed the first practical pressure suit with B.F. Goodrich, creating the direct ancestor of American space suits from Mercury through Apollo.
• Post and Will Rogers were killed on August 15, 1935, in a takeoff accident near Point Barrow, Alaska. The Winnie Mae now resides in the Smithsonian.