With the
consent of his employer, Post entered the Winnie Mae
in the National Air Races and piloted the plane to the first
of its records, now inscribed on the side of its fuselage:
‘Los Angeles to Chicago 9 hrs. 9 mm. 4 sec. Aug. 27, 1930.’
On June 23,
1931, Post, accompanied by Harold Gatty as navigator, took
off from New York to make a world circuit in record time.
The first stop was Harbour Grace, Newfoundland. From there,
the fourteen-stop course included England, Germany, Russia,
Siberia, Alaska, Canada, thence to Cleveland, and finally to
New York on July 1, 1931. The circuit was completed in 8
days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes. Halls admiration for his
pilot manifested itself in the gift of the Winnie Mae
to Post.
Wiley Post
spent the following year exhibiting the plane and conducting
various flight tests. The airplane was groomed with an
overhaul of the engine, and a radio compass and an auto
pilot were installed. Both these instruments were at the
time in their final stages of development by the Army and
Sperry Gyroscope Company.
On July 15,
1933, Post left New York. Closely following his former route
but making only eleven stops, he made a 15,596-mile circuit
of the earth in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes.
Post next
modified the Winnie Mae for long-distance,
high-altitude operation. He recognized the need to develop
some means of enabling the pilot to operate in a cabin
atmosphere of greater density than the outside atmospheric
environment. Because of its design, the Winnie Mae
could not be equipped with a pressure cabin. Post therefore
asked the B. F. Goodrich Company to assist him in developing
a full pressure suit for the pilot. Post hoped that by
equipping the plane with an engine supercharger and a
special jettisonable landing gear, and himself with a
pressure suit, he could cruise for long distances at high
altitude in the jetstream. On March 15, 1935, Post flew from
Burbank, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, a distance of 2,035
miles, in 7 hours, 19 minutes. At times, the Winnie Mae
attained a ground speed of 340 mph, indicating that the
airplane was indeed operating in the jetstream.
Wiley Post died
shortly afterward in the crash of a hybrid Lockheed
Orion-Sirius floatplane near Point Barrow, Alaska, on August
15, 1935. His companion, humorist Will Rogers, also perished
in the accident. The Smithsonian Institution acquired the
Winnie Mae from Mrs. Post in 1936.
During its
high-altitude flight research, the Winnie Mae made
use of a special tubular steel landing gear developed by
Lockheed engineers Clarence L. Kelly’ Johnson and James
Gerschler. It was released after takeoff by the pilot using
a cockpit lever, thus reducing the total drag of the plane
and eliminating its weight. The Winnie Mae would then
continue on its flight and land on a special metal-covered
spruce landing skid glued to the fuselage. During these
flights, Post wore a special pressure suit, the world’s
first practical pressure suit and an important step on the
road to space. The suit was the third type developed by Post
and Russell S. Colley of B. F. Goodrich Company.
It consisted of
three layers: long underwear. an inner black rubber air
pressure bladder, and an outer cloth contoured suit. A
special pressure helmet was then bolted on the suit. It had
a removable faceplate that Post could seal when he reached a
height of 17,000 feet. The helmet had a special breathing
oxygen system and could accommodate earphones and a throat
microphone. The suit could withstand an internal pressure of
7 psi. Bandolera-type cords prevented the helmet from rising
as the suit was pressurized. A liquid oxygen container,
consisting of a double-walled vacuum bottle, utilized the
natural "boil off" tendencies of supercold liquid oxygen to
furnish gaseous oxygen for suit pressurization and breathing
purposes. This early full pressure suit is the direct
ancestor of full pressure suits used on the X-15 research
airplane and manned space voyages. The Winnie Mae,
its special jettisonable landing gear, and Post’s pressure
suit are in the collection of the National Air and Space
Museum.