Wiley Post, the Winnie Mae, and the Pressure Suit That Changed the Ceiling on Human Flight

Wiley Post - a one-eyed Oklahoma oil worker who used his injury settlement to buy flying lessons - built the first practical pressure suit, documented the jet stream from inside a cockpit, and flew solo around the world before dying at 36. His research in the early 1930s laid the groundwork for every high-altitude aircraft that followed, from U-2 spy planes to the astronaut suits of the Mercury and Gemini programs. The equipment he pioneered on a shoestring budget is why pilots today can fly at 45,000 feet.

From the Oilfield to a Pilot’s Certificate

In 1926, Wiley Hardeman Post was working an oil crew in Seminole County, Oklahoma when a piece of equipment sent a metal chip into his left eye. The eye could not be saved. Oklahoma’s workmen’s compensation program paid him $1,698.25.

Post took every cent of it and walked into a flight school. Most men in his position would have protected that money. Post saw it as a down payment on a pilot’s certificate.

He earned his license and progressed quickly. By the late 1920s he had caught the attention of F.C. Hall, a wealthy Oklahoma oilman who needed a personal pilot. Hall bought a Lockheed Vega - a single-engine, high-wing monoplane with a smooth molded-plywood fuselage, one of the fastest and most capable aircraft of its era - and named it the Winnie Mae, after his daughter. Post flew it everywhere.

The Around-the-World Flights

Post was winning air races and building a reputation as a precision pilot. Then, in 1931, he and navigator Harold Gatty flew the Winnie Mae around the world. The goal wasn’t to be the first - that record already existed - but to be fast. They completed the circumnavigation in 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes, landing back at Roosevelt Field in New York to enormous crowds. A ticker-tape parade through New York City followed. They met the president. Their names led every newspaper in the country.

Post wasn’t satisfied.

Two years later, in 1933, he flew the same route alone. No navigator. No crew. Just Post, the Winnie Mae, and a clock. He finished in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes - the first solo circumnavigation of the globe, and faster than his own record with a full crew.

Why Post Became Obsessed With Altitude

The around-the-world records made Post famous. What he did next made him matter.

Post had been reading about stratospheric research and arrived at an idea that seemed radical at the time: if you could push an aircraft above 30,000 feet, you’d be flying in fundamentally different air. Thinner. Less turbulent. And potentially far faster than anything achievable at lower altitudes.

The obstacle was immediate and obvious. At 30,000 feet, atmospheric pressure drops to roughly one-third of sea level. A pilot in an open cockpit would lose consciousness and die. Two solutions existed: pressurize the cabin, or pressurize the pilot.

Post chose the pilot.

How the First Practical Pressure Suit Was Built

In 1934, Post approached the B.F. Goodrich Company with his concept. An engineer named Russell Colley took the project seriously.

The first suit had a rubber bladder inside a cotton outer layer. They inflated it - it burst. The second suit failed at the joints: under pressure differential, bending your arms or legs became nearly impossible. Flying an airplane while wearing it wasn’t practical.

The third suit worked. A full-body rubber pressure suit with a hard aluminum helmet, a glass visor, and an oxygen connection. Post looked, by any reasonable description, like a man dressed for a planet that didn’t yet exist. He was doing this in 1934 - four years before the first pressurized airliner entered service and roughly 25 years before the space program.

Test flights began. Post pushed the Winnie Mae to 20,000 feet, modified the engine with a supercharger to maintain performance in thin air, then pushed higher.

Post Discovers the Jet Stream

Flying at altitudes he estimated between 25,000 and 35,000 feet over the western United States, Post noticed something he couldn’t explain. His airspeed indicated around 200 mph. But landmarks on the ground were passing beneath him at something closer to 300 mph - sometimes more.

There was a wind at altitude. A powerful, fast, directional wind that had no equivalent down low.

Post documented what he was observing as a “high-altitude wind current” in his notes. He brought it to the meteorological community. He was met with polite skepticism.

He was right. What Post had found was the jet stream - the fast-moving ribbon of high-altitude air that every flight dispatcher and every long-range pilot accounts for today. Modern jetliners ride it eastbound across the Atlantic to save fuel and hours. It is fundamental to how high-altitude flight is planned and executed. The scientific community formally confirmed its existence through research in the 1940s, with significant contributions from Japanese meteorological balloon data collected during the same period. But the first person to ride the jet stream inside an aircraft was a one-eyed Oklahoma pilot in a homemade pressure suit.

Why This Matters: Post’s Legacy in Every High-Altitude Cockpit

Post’s pressure suit work with Colley at Goodrich became the foundation for all subsequent high-altitude protective equipment. The suits worn by Mercury and Gemini astronauts trace their lineage directly to that third suit - the one that held together. Pilots who flew the Lockheed U-2 over Soviet territory in the late 1950s wore suits that were direct descendants of what Post and Colley developed. Every pilot climbing above 60,000 feet today wears equipment that started with Post’s conviction that the sky had more to offer if you could just get up into it.

He was 36 years old and still actively pursuing stratospheric research when he died. He had a working theory about crossing the Pacific nonstop at high altitude - a concept decades ahead of anything being seriously considered in commercial aviation.

The Crash at Point Barrow

On August 15, 1935, Post was not flying a research aircraft. He was piloting a hybrid floatplane - a Lockheed Orion fuselage mated to a Lockheed Explorer wing, with a Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine. The aircraft was nose-heavy. The floats were oversized for the airframe. It was a plane built for a specific trip, not engineered for a mission - a distinction experienced pilots will recognize.

His passenger was Will Rogers, the humorist and newspaper columnist, one of the most beloved public figures in America. Rogers wanted to see Alaska. Post was going to fly him there.

They departed from a small lagoon near Point Barrow, Alaska - the northernmost point of the United States. The weather was foggy. The aircraft climbed to roughly 50 feet before the engine quit. Fifty feet provides no altitude to recover anything. Both men were killed on impact.

News coverage centered heavily on Rogers, whose celebrity dominated the narrative. Post’s story was partially overshadowed in the days that followed. The aviation community understood what had been lost.

Where to See the Winnie Mae Today

The Winnie Mae hangs in the main hall of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. - that distinctive yellow fuselage, the Wasp engine gleaming at the front. Post’s third pressure suit is in the collection as well. So is his eyepatch.

That last detail is worth noting. The man who documented the jet stream, built the first practical pressure suit, and flew solo around the world did all of it with monocular vision. The depth perception that flight surgeons verify at every third-class medical - the binocular vision every student pilot is told they need - Post had none of it from the day he received his certificate. He made it work anyway.

Most advances in aviation history came out of programs: development budgets, engineering teams, years of incremental progress on government contracts. Occasionally, one person sees something no one else has seen yet, builds what they need from whatever is at hand, and goes.

Key Takeaways

Wiley Post funded his pilot certificate with a $1,698.25 workmen’s compensation settlement for a lost eye - then became one of aviation’s most consequential figures.
He flew around the world twice in the Winnie Mae: 8 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes with navigator Harold Gatty in 1931, then 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes solo in 1933 - the first solo circumnavigation ever.
Working with engineer Russell Colley at B.F. Goodrich, Post developed the first practical pressure suit in 1934 - the direct ancestor of astronaut suits and all modern high-altitude flight gear.
Post was the first person to document the jet stream from inside an aircraft, flying at an estimated 25,000–35,000 feet over the western United States; the scientific community confirmed the phenomenon in the 1940s.
He died on August 15, 1935, at age 36, in a crash near Point Barrow, Alaska, with passenger Will Rogers.
The Winnie Mae and Post’s pressure suit are both on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.