Forgotten eagle

Wiley Post set records. In the summer of 1931 with navigator Harold Gatty he flew his single-engine airplane, the Winniw Mae, around the globe in a record-breaking eight days. Two years later he shaved twenty-one hours off his own record, and this time he did it flying solo. The country went wild; in Wiley Post a nation in the grip of the Great Depression found a hero and in the flight of the Winnie Mae a legend. History, though, has not been kind to Wiley Post. It has footnoted the pioneering airman who flew the “high wind” at stratospheric altitude and the inventive aviator who designed the…