On this day in New York · July 22, 1933
Wiley Post Lands Solo from Around the World
Fifty thousand New Yorkers mobbed a Brooklyn airfield to greet the one-eyed Oklahoman who had just flown around the planet alone.
The facts
- Date
- July 22, 1933
- Location
- Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn
- Feat
- The first solo flight around the world, in 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes
- Aircraft
- The Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae
On July 22, 1933, Wiley Post brought his Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae, down at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to complete the first solo flight around the world. He had left the same field a week earlier and circled the globe by way of Berlin, Siberia, and Alaska in seven days, eighteen hours, and forty-nine minutes, beating the record he had set two years before with a navigator aboard. Post was alone in the cockpit but not flying blind: he carried an early autopilot and a radio direction finder that helped point the way. A crowd of fifty thousand swarmed the runway when he touched down.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Fifty thousand people greeted him on his return on July 22 after 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes
Wiley Post, Wikipedia
Source: Wiley Post, Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Post showed that a single pilot could navigate the globe with the help of new instruments, work that fed straight into modern aviation. He went on to pioneer the pressure suit and high-altitude flight before dying in an Alaska crash with Will Rogers in 1935.
Sources
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