19331776 Club
Post lands the Winnie Mae alone, and the world has never been circled this fast
Fifty thousand people packed Floyd Bennett Field to watch a one-eyed Oklahoma oil-field worker finish what no pilot had done without a navigator.
In 1933, no pilot had circled the globe alone by air. Wiley Post took off alone from Floyd Bennett Field on July 15 in his Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae, relying on a new autopilot and radio direction finder instead of a second man in the cockpit. He landed back in New York on July 22 to a crowd of 50,000. It was the first time anyone had circled the globe solo by air…
