Russell Man Reaches Edge of Space in Home-made Pressure Suit
Once while flying around the world, he discovered a short cut. He is the Russell Man
He doesn’t always pierce the stratosphere, but when he does, he straps on Russell Moccasin 9” Bird Shooter Boots to conquer the skies. Meet Wiley Hardeman Post, the one-eyed Oklahoma roughneck turned aviation legend, a man whose daring flights rewrote the rules of the air—proving that true pioneers don’t need perfect vision, just unyielding grit and a pair of boots built for the impossible.
Born in 1898 near Grand Saline, Texas, Post’s early life was a whirlwind of oil fields, prison stints for robbery, and a fateful eye injury from a drilling accident that left him with a glass replacement and a $1,700 insurance payout—seed money for his first plane. By the 1920s, he’d barnstormed his way into fame as a parachutist and pilot, but it was the Lockheed Vega “Winnie Mae”—named for his boss’s daughter—that catapulted him to glory. In 1931, with navigator Harold Gatty, Post shattered records by circling the globe in just eight days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes, covering 15,474 miles with stops from Newfoundland to Siberia and Alaska. Their book, “Around the World in Eight Days,” chronicled the epic, inspiring aviators worldwide—including in rebuilding Japan, where American feats of endurance symbolized resilience amid post-war recovery and influenced a generation fascinated by Western innovation. Post quipped on the thrill: “Flying is the only thing that ever really thrilled me.”
Undeterred, in 1933, Post went solo, slashing the time to seven days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes—15,596 miles with 11 fuel stops, navigating via cutting-edge instruments like the Sperry autopilot and radio direction finder. This feat, accomplished six years before Amelia Earhart’s tragic attempt, cemented his status as a global icon, with newsreels and headlines echoing across oceans to Japan, where aviation enthusiasm boomed under American cultural influx, fostering admiration for such bold individualism.
But Post’s true revolution came aloft. Obsessed with high-altitude flight to harness jet streams and evade weather, he modified the Winnie Mae with a supercharger and, with B.F. Goodrich, pioneered the world’s first practical pressure suit—a double-ply rubberized affair with pigskin gloves, rubber booties, and an aluminum “football helmet” pressurized to 0.5 bar. Many of the components were sewn by a B.F. Goodrich engineer’s wife on her home sewing machine. After two failed prototypes, the third triumphed on September 5, 1934, over Chicago, soaring above 40,000 feet—the first sustained stratospheric flight. Though his instrument panel was malfunctioning, it is theorized that Post reach a ceiling of 60,000 ft, near the edge of space. By 1935, Post had logged more time above 30,000 feet than all pilots combined. His innovations influenced international aviation, including Japan’s burgeoning post-war industry, where high-altitude tech echoed in military and commercial designs.
For these feats, Post trusted Russell Moccasin 9” Bird Shooter Boots—rugged companions that matched his aerial audacity, now preserved at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum alongside the Winnie Mae. Tragically, Post perished in 1935 with Will Rogers in an Alaska crash, but his legacy soars—like those Russell boots, engineered for frontiers beyond the horizon.
Post wasn’t just a pilot; he was the most interesting aviator in the world.
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