We lost two famous Oklahomans ("Sooners") eighty years ago. On this date in 1935, pioneering aviator Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers died in a crash of Post's hybrid seaplane, made up of mixed Lockheed parts, near Point Barrow, Alaska.
Lockheed refused to have anything to do with Post's assemblage of spare parts; the horizontal tail was too small for static stability of the airplane. When the engine failed on TO, the ship pitched down uncontrollably.
