Editing Wiley Post (section)

==Final flight and death==
[[File:Will Rogers and Wiley Post cph.3b05600.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|Post with Will Rogers, August 1935]]
In 1935, Post became interested in surveying a mail-and-passenger air route from the West Coast of the United States to Russia. Short on cash, he built a hybrid using parts salvaged from two different aircraft: the fuselage of an airworthy [[Lockheed Model 9 Orion|Lockheed Orion]] and the wings of a wrecked experimental [[Lockheed Explorer]]. The Explorer wing was six feet longer in span than the Orion's original wing, an advantage that extended the range of the hybrid aircraft.<ref name="Sterling 2001, p. 164">Sterling 2001, p. 164.</ref>

As the Explorer wing did not have retractable landing gear, it lent itself to the fitting of [[floatplane|floats]] for landing in the lakes of [[Alaska]] and [[Siberia]]. [[Lockheed Corporation|Lockheed]] refused to make the modifications Post requested, on the grounds that the two designs were incompatible and potentially a dangerous mix, so he made the changes himself.<ref name="Sterling 2001, p. 164">Sterling 2001, p. 164.</ref>

Post's friend, Will Rogers, visited him often at the airport in [[Burbank, California]], while Pacific Airmotive Ltd. was modifying the aircraft,<ref>Sterling 2001, pp. 167–169.</ref> and asked Post to fly him to Alaska in search of new material for his newspaper column. When the floats Post had ordered were delayed, he used a set designed for a larger aircraft, making the aircraft more nose-heavy than it already was.<ref>Johnson and Mohler. [http://www.sil.si.edu/smithsoniancontributions/AnnalsofFlight/pdf_lo/SAOF-0008.pdf ''Wiley Post, His Winnie Mae, and the World's First Pressure Suit.'']  p. 112. Retrieved: 3 April 2009.</ref> According to the research of [[Bryan Sterling]], however, the floats were the correct type for the aircraft.<ref name="Sterling 2001, p. 164"/>

After making a test flight in July, Post and Rogers left [[Lake Washington]], near [[Seattle]], in early August and made several stops in Alaska. While Post piloted the aircraft, Rogers wrote his columns on his typewriter. On August 15, they left [[Fairbanks]] for [[Point Barrow]]. They were a few miles from there when they became uncertain of their position in bad weather and landed in a lagoon to ask for directions. On takeoff, the engine failed at low altitude, and the aircraft, uncontrollably nose-heavy at low speed, plunged into the lagoon, shearing off the right wing, and ended up inverted in the shallow part. Both Post and Rogers died instantly.<ref>Sterling 2001, p. 246.</ref>
Post is buried in [[Memorial Park Cemetery (Oklahoma City)|Memorial Park Cemetery]], section 48, [[Oklahoma City, Oklahoma]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=p5ZMMkkrSZUC&dq=wiley+post+memorial+park&pg=PA175 ''History Ahead'']</ref>