How a self-taught pilot discovered the jet stream while wearing a homemade pressure suit.

Nature · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Wiley Post was a pioneer who conquered the globe solo, but his most enduring legacy lies in the thin, freezing air of the stratosphere. By developing the world's first practical pressure suit, he reached altitudes of 50,000 feet, where he became the first to identify the powerful high-altitude winds we call the jet stream.

Born in 1898, Wiley Post was an unlikely aviation icon. After losing his left eye in an oil-rig accident in 1926, he used his settlement money to buy his first aircraft, eventually gaining national fame by flying the Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae. In 1931, he and navigator Harold Gatty completed the first aerial circumnavigation by a single-engined monoplane in under nine days. By 1933, Post pushed further, completing the first solo flight around the world using an autopilot device to replace his navigator.

Post’s ambition shifted toward the stratosphere in 1934. With support from Phillips Petroleum, he collaborated with Russell S. Colley of B.F. Goodrich to engineer a pressurized suit. The design was a complex assembly of long underwear, a rubber air bladder, and an outer layer of parachute fabric, topped with a diver's helmet. After two failed prototypes, the third suit allowed him to reach 40,000 feet on his first test flight in September 1934, and eventually 50,000 feet, where he discovered the jet stream.

Despite his technical achievements, Post’s career ended abruptly in 1935. While surveying a potential air route to Russia, he piloted a hybrid aircraft—built from a Lockheed Orion fuselage and Lockheed Explorer wings—that proved dangerously nose-heavy. On August 15, 1935, while attempting to land in a lagoon near Point Barrow, Alaska, to ask for directions, the engine failed. The aircraft crashed, killing both Post and his passenger, the famous humorist Will Rogers. Today, Post is remembered not only for his records but for the foundational advances he made in high-altitude flight technology.

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