High-altitude pressure suit for Wiley Post

Year

1934

By

Wiley Post, Russell Colley

Company

B.F. Goodrich

Place

Akron, Summit County ZIP 44308 · Akron · Summit County

In the early 1930s pilots wanted to fly higher, where winds are fast and the air is thin. At extreme altitude the air pressure is too low for a person to survive unprotected. Wiley Post, an Oklahoma pilot who had flown around the world in 1931 with navigator Harold Gatty and again solo in 1933, wanted to go higher still in his Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae.

In 1934 Post worked with Russell Colley, an engineer at B.F. Goodrich in Akron, to make one of aviation's first practical pressure suits. It had three layers: long underwear, an inner black rubber bladder holding air pressure, and an outer layer of rubberized parachute fabric.

With it, Post reached altitudes above 50,000 feet. Along the way he discovered the jet stream, the fast current of air high above the earth.

Post died on August 15, 1935, when his aircraft crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska, killing him and humorist Will Rogers. His Winnie Mae is at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Colley's work is part of the line that leads to later pressure suits.

• 1931: Post and Harold Gatty fly around the world in 8 days, 15 hours and 51 minutes. source
• 1933: Post flies solo around the world. source
• 1934: Post and Goodrich engineer Russell Colley develop the pressure suit. (Akron, OH) source
• 1934: Post flies above 50,000 feet and finds the jet stream. source
• 1935-08-15: Post and Will Rogers die in a crash near Point Barrow, Alaska. (Point Barrow, AK) source

• Post reached over 50,000 feet in the suit.
• The flights led to the discovery of the jet stream.

Forerunner of later spacesuits; Colley later worked on Mercury suits.

One summary dates Post's pressure-suit test to September 1935, but he died in August 1935, so the test flights meant are those of 1934.

• Wikipedia: Wiley Post

• Wikipedia: Russell Colley
• Wikipedia: Wiley Post