1937 Chkalov flight from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington USA...

[AlexisDetroit]

Was this 63 hour flight by an ANT-25 a non-stop flight? I see on one website where there is some doubt about the claim of it being a non-stop 63 flight.

According to the Chlakov commemorative monument at Pierson air field in Vancouver, Washington USA the flight was intended to end in Oakland, California but ended in Vancouver (not Canada), Washington.

Curious what folks know about this flight and if they can provide any links to the history of the flight.

[Wageslave]

There are always websites trying to trash or change history. I don't think there is any doubt it was non stop. Where and how would a stop have been engineered? There was nowhere in between they could feasibly have gone without being seen, and why would they do that? It was a prestige national project and you just don't cheat on those. It was a pretty heroic effort.

Read about it chapter and verse first-hand by Boris Chertok who was closely involved in building and modifying the aircraft - in his extraordinary book "Rockets and People" available as a free download from the NASA library (Vol 1 for this story).

[AlexisDetroit]

I'm curious if that is the longest flight ever time wise without in air refueling.

[A30yoyo]

The P2V Turtle flight was 55hrs, Rutan/Yeager/Voyager flight 216hrs
Smithsonian have the 50th anniversary commemorative poster archived Poster, Commemorative - Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19960102000)

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/zz20/A30yoyo/CHKALOV50thAnniversaryPoster.jpg

The Chkalov Transpolar Flight Marker (http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=50830)

ANT-25 at Pearson Airfield 1937 (http://www.hmdb.org/PhotoFullSize.asp?PhotoID=27927)

NASA - "Rockets and People, Volume 1" (http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol1_detail.html)

[WHBM]

According to the Chlakov commemorative monument at Pierson air field in Vancouver, Washington USA the flight was intended to end in Oakland, California but ended in Vancouver (not Canada), Washington.
There's a substantial amount of Chkalov memorabilia, and a display, in the large Monino aircraft museum just outside Moscow.

The piece I like best is they have the memorial plaque carried by the aircraft reading, in Russian and English, "From the Peasants and Workers of the Soviet Union to the Peasants and Workers of the United States of America".

Chkalov is still well regarded in Russia. Moscow, St Petersburg, Ekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod all have a Chkalovskaya station on their Metro systems. This is quite common in Russia, for stations to be named after some prominent aspect of public life rather than after the locality (there were loads of Stalin-this-or-that, mostly renamed now !). The Ekaterinburg Metro didn't even first open until the 1990s, so Chkalov was still well-regarded even then. I haven't seen any commemoration of the other two crew members.

[Wageslave]

Here, in part, is what happened to the other two.

The 1937 over the pole flight was commemorated in 1975 with the erection of a monument in the United States that hailed a Soviet achievement. ANT-25 crew members Georgiy Raidukov and Alexander Belyakov, who were then generals, attended the ceremonies. Valery Chkalov was killed in 1938 while test flying a new aircraft.



From the link in A30yoyo's post "The Chkalov transpolar flight marker"