| Summary: | Technicians at Renton Field work on the plane that aviation pioneer Wiley Post planned to fly on an exploratory route to Europe through Alaska and Siberia. It is a hybrid with a Lockheed Orion fuselage and Lockheed Explorer wings equipped with a 550 HP Wasp engine and oversize 260-gallon gas tanks. The large pontoons were installed by Northwest Air Service in Renton. Post and his passenger, humorist Will Rogers, left Renton Field on August 7, 1935. The ill-fated journey ended on August 15 when the plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska and both men were killed. Will Rogers also known as William Penn Adair Rogers [note from the Library of Congress Authority File]. Handwritten on negative: Wiley Post plane. Handwritten on sleeve: Post, Wiley, Rogers, Will and the plane in which they met death; Northwest Air Service; Berger, Art, section head, aircraft engine dept. 15. Caption information source: P-I research files. Date photograph was filed at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (date of photograph and file date may differ by a month or more): September 27, 1935. 1 nitrate negative: b&w; 4 x 5 in.
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