"Good, very good and great" record breaking pilots of the era were folks like Lindberg, Jeppesen, Byrd, Post, Doolittle,
Joe, while all of these had some familiarity to me I did have to do some research. Lindberg and Dolittle were the most familiar followed by Byrd and Post. Most of what I found was a real eye-opener. In those free-wheeling, no government regulations, no insurance safetycrats, times $500 for a surplus Jenny and an hour or so of instruction made you a pilot. The trick was LUCK and SURVIVAL.
Charles Lindburg on 9 Apr 1922 he made his first flight but not alone. He did not have the money to pay for a damage deposit. In June he joined a flying Circus as a
wing walker and parachutist. May 1923 he bought his own plane a surplus Curtiss JN-4 and
spent a half an hour with a pilot who'd come to buy his own surplus Jenny. He then
climbed into his own Jenny and soloed. He returned to barnstorming this time as a pilot. He
broke several propellers in bad landings and once ran into a ditch. In 1924 he
crashed the Jenny for good when the engine stalled on takeoff. 19 March 1924 he joined the USAAS to become an Army pilot. There were 104 new cadets and only 18 made it to the end. On 5 March 1925 just before graduation he had
a mid-air collision with another cadet. He managed to parachute to safety. 25 October he became an air mail pilot flying from St. Louis to Chicago. Due to bad weather he
got lost and ran out o fuel twice having then to bailout at night as he approached Chicago. His 33.5 hour flight, New York to Paris is a legend, fighting storms, winds, icing, and fatigue, several times he flew just feet above the ocean to throw spray into his face. In the last hours he began to hallucinate to the point of have conversations with them. Landing in Paris he became a worldwide celebrity, Luck Lindy the Lone Eagle. 27 May 1927 he married Ann Morrow and they eventually had six children the first Charles Lindburg Jr. was kidnapped and murdered. During WWII Roosevelt would not allow him back in the Army Air Force calling him a "Damned Nazi". He did manage to get sent to the Pacific as a consultant where various combat units allowed him to fly combat missions, 50 of them, and in one shot down a Japanese plane. Starting in 1957 during his frequent trips to Germany he began having affairs with 3 German women two of them being sisters and the third his private secretary. He had 3 children with the first and two children with her sister and two more with his secretary. 10 days before his death he wrote to each and asked them to keep the secret which they did until 2001. DNA tests have confirmed their parentage.
Elrey Jeppesen
At 18 joined a Flying Circuis as a ticket taker, prop turner, wingwalker and parachutist. After 2 hours and 15 minutes of instruction he bought a surplus Jenny which he then flew solo. In 1930 he joined the Boeing Air Transport as an air mail pilot. During his many flights he kept a small black book of routes, landmarks, possible landing fields, and farmers willing to help. Initially he gave thes away to fellow pilots but eventually started selling them for $10 each. When Boeing began carrying passengers he became one of the first commercial pilots and was the first to carry a stewardess. On 10 June 1941 while landing his DC-3 in a rain storm he over ran the airport boundary lights and crashed into a 3 foot deep ditch. There were no injuries but the aircraft was badly damaged. Soon after this he and his wife founded the Jeppesen Company and began the commercial production of his charts
Wiley Post
He just managed to complete the 6th grade and had his first airplane ride at 15 in 1913. He enrolled briefly in a flying school but did not get far so he turned to work in the oil field. He join the USAAF but WWI ended before he could complete his training. Jobs were tight so he turned to armed robbery. Arrested and sent to prison in 1921 he was paroled in 1922. In 1926 he joined a flying circus as a parachutist. An accident on 1 Oct 1926 cost him his left eye but the settlement money allowed him to buy his own aircraft and learn to fly. By 1928 he became the personal pilot for two wealthy oilmen who had purchased a Lockheed Vega they named the Winnie Mae. Post used this aircraft to win the L.A. to Chicago Air Derby in just over 9 hours. He then used the Vega to fly his first round the world flight starting on 23 June 1931. Eight days and almost 16 hours later he landed back in New York. On 15 July 1933 he departed New York on his second round-the-world flight this time flying solo using a newly developed Sperry auto-pilot and Radio compass in place of a navigator. After 7 days and almost 19 hours he returned to New York. In 1935 Post decided to develop an Air/passenger route from the US west coast o Russia. Short on cash he decided to build his own aircraft using the fuselage of a Lockheed Orion and the wings of a Lockheed Explorer. Since there were many lakes in both Alaska and Siberia he decided to fit pontoons. When the custom set he ordered did not arrive he decided to use a larger pair from a Fokker aircraft which made the already nose-heavy aircraft even more so. In early August he and Will Rodgers left on their west coast to Russia flight. On August 15th they left Fairbanks Alaska heading to Point Barrow. Almost there the weather turned bad with fog and they became lost. They landed on a lake to ask directions and when they were told that Barrow was only 7 miles away they decided to push on. They had been flying on the forward fuel tanks which were almost empty (plane was nose-heavy) and in their haste to leave Post forgot to switch to full tanks. Just after take-off the engine failed and the aircraft dove into the ground. Post was crushed by the engine being rammed backward and Rodgers had been thrown out of the aircraft. Both were killed instantly.
Richard Byrd
He earned his Naval Aviator wings in August 1917 after which he became very interested in aircraft navigation and developed a Drift Indicator, a sun compass, and the bubble sextant for aircraft navigation. On 9 May 1926 Byrd and Chief Petty Officer Floyd Bennett took off from Spitzbergen Norway flew to the North Pole, circled for 13 minutes, and returned to Spitzbergen, a total of 1535 miles in 15 hours and 57 minutes. Both Byrd and Bennett were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in spite of the requirement that it be awarded for action against enemy combatants.
However there has always been controversy about this polar flight which has grown in recent times. In 1958, Bernt Balchen, (Norwegian pioneer polar aviator, navigator, aircraft mechanical engineer and military leader. He also worked on Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Vega preparing it for her transatlantic flight) claimed that Bennett confessed to him that they had never reached the pole. In 1996 Byrd's diary was made public. In it were several erased (but still legible) sextant readings that did not agree with those in his official written report. Dennis Rawlins (American astronomer and member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) using Byrd's erased entries calculated that Byrd had gotten to within 150 miles of the Pole when he turned back due to an oil leak in his engine. There are also Byrd supporters who counter these negative claims.
Jimmy Doolittle
The surprise here for me was the vast contributions he made to instrument flying when most felt that human senses/perception/instinct were all that was needed. In 1927 he made that impossible outside loop. In 1929 he was the first to takeoff, fly, and land an aircraft totally blind using only instruments. He developed the Artificial Horizon and Directional Gyroscope. He influenced Shell Oil to produce the first 100 octane AvGas. He was very active in racing aircraft winning the Thompson Trophy in 1932 in that notorious Bee Gee R-1. The Doolittle Raid needs no commentary, while doing little actual damage its psychological effect and its effect on US moral is beyond measure