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Not the chaps you were looking for, but another famous 1930s aviator: Wiley Post. Veteran of two “around-the-world” flights in his Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae (the second one solo). The Vega had a formed-plywood fuselage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Vega

In 1934, with financial support from Frank Phillips of the Phillips Petroleum Company, Post began exploring the limits of high-altitude, long-distance flight. The Winnie Mae‘s cabin could not be pressurized so he worked with Russell S. Colley of the B.F. Goodrich Company to develop what became the world’s first practical pressure suit. The body of the suit had three layers: long underwear, an inner black rubber air pressure bladder, and an outer suit made of rubberised parachute fabric. The outer suit was glued to a frame with arm and leg joints that allowed him to operate the flight controls and to walk to and from the aircraft. Attached to the frame were pigskin gloves, rubber boots, and an aluminium and plastic diver’s helmet. The helmet had a removable faceplate that could be sealed at a height of 17,000 feet, and could accommodate earphones and a throat microphone. In the first flight using the suit on September 5, 1934, Post reached an altitude of 40,000 feet above Chicago. Eventually flying as high as 50,000 feet (unofficial, as his recording altimeter had frozen before he ended his climb, while the normal one kept working), Post discovered the jet stream and made the first major practical advances in pressurized flight.

Note that Wiley lost one eye in a oil drilling accident before he ever learned to fly!

He died in a plane crash August 15, 1935 in Alaska.