21 Facts About Wiley Post

Wiley Hardeman Post was a famed American aviator during the interwar period and the first pilot to fly solo around the world.

Also known for his work in high-altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits and discovered the jet stream.

Wiley Post was born to parents who cultivated cotton on a farm near Grand Saline, Texas.

Wiley Post's father was William Francis and his mother was Mae Quinlan Post, a person of mixed Cherokee heritage.

Wiley Post's family moved to Oklahoma when he was five.

Wiley Post was an indifferent student, but managed to complete the sixth grade.

Wiley Post was arrested in 1921 and sent to the Oklahoma State Reformatory, serving more than a year there, and was paroled in summer 1922.

On October 1,1926, Wiley Post was badly injured in an oil-rig accident when a piece of metal pierced his left eye, but he used the settlement money to buy his first aircraft.

Wiley Post was the personal pilot of wealthy Oklahoma oilmen Powell Briscoe and FC Hall in 1930 when Hall bought a high-wing, single-engine Lockheed Vega, one of the most famous record-breaking aircraft of the early 1930s.

The oilman nicknamed it the Winnie Mae after his daughter, and Wiley Post achieved his first national prominence in it by winning the National Air Race Derby, from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Wiley Post departed from Floyd Bennett Field and continued on to Berlin where repairs were attempted to his autopilot, stopped at Konigsberg to replace some forgotten maps, Moscow for more repairs to his autopilot, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk for final repairs to the autopilot, Rukhlovo, Khabarovsk, Flat where his propeller had to be replaced, Fairbanks, Edmonton, and back to Floyd Bennett Field.

In 1934, with financial support from Frank Phillips of the Phillips Petroleum Company, Wiley Post began exploring the limits of high-altitude long-distance flight.

Between February 22 and June 15,1935, Wiley Post made four unsuccessful attempts to complete the first high altitude non-stop flight from Los Angeles to New York, all of which failed for various mechanical reasons.

When Wiley Post was killed on August 15,1935, thus ending the possibility of any more attempts to complete the AM-2 stratosphere flight, the covers were finally cancelled in Los Angeles on August 20,1935, and forwarded to their addressees.

In 1935, Wiley Post became interested in surveying a mail-and-passenger air route from the West Coast of the United States to Russia.

Lockheed refused to make the modifications Post requested on the grounds that the two designs were incompatible and potentially a dangerous mix, so Wiley made the changes himself.

Wiley Post is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Wiley Post received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Gold Medal of Belgium, and the International Harmon Trophy.

Wiley Post was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1969.

Wiley Post was inducted into the First Flight Society's First Flight Shrine, located at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, on December 17,1970.

Wiley Post was inducted posthumously into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2004.