The Chkalov Flight: Almost Lost to Time

Vancouver, Washington, is a Portland, Oregon, suburb perhaps best known as the setting of "Fifty Shades of Grey." Less famous, but just as titillating, is its association with aviation history: the place where Russian airmen landed after a grueling two-and-a-half-day flight over the North Pole on June 20, 1937. It was the first flight in history over the North Pole.

The aircraft, a long-range single-engine Tupolev ANT-25, was piloted by Valery Chkalov, along with his copilot, Georgi "Baiduk" Baidukov, and navigator, Alexander Belyakov. On their Sunday morning landing, they were welcomed as heroes. They soon gained worldwide fame.

But the flight did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, its circumstances stand at the confluence of aviation history, Soviet ambition, and 20th-century international relations.

After World War I, interest in aviation took off (pun intended). Although the technology was not even 20 years old, the war had proven the airplane's viability and speeded up its development. All through the 1920s and 1930s, aviators like Charles Lindberg, Wiley Post, and Amelia Earhart became famous for flights that pushed the limits of human and technical endurance. New telecommunications technologies only further fueled their celebrity. Experimentation with aircraft moved at a fast clip.

At the same time, the Soviet Union, also a novelty, was finding its footing on the international stage. Joseph Stalin had risen to power in 1924 and was on a ruthless push towards modernization. This included the field of aviation. While plans to build a squadron of airships never got off the ground (once again, pun intended), a new Soviet Air Force and its daring pilots came to symbolize the competitive innovation of communist society.

Chkalov, Baidukov, and Belyakov were already famous when they set out to cross the pole. In 1935 Chkalov had led an aerobatic demonstration in Moscow, after which he met Stalin for the first time. In 1936, he and his crew had flown the length of Russia in their ANT-25. But the transpolar route had yet to be done. Chkalov was able to convince Stalin of the feasibility of the flight. On June 18, 1937, the trio took off from Moscow and headed north, bound for San Francisco.

The plane had been specially designed for long-range, record-breaking flights. It had wide, glider-like wings and a dome for astronomical navigation (a necessity before GPS). The two main engineers who worked on the ANT-25, Pavel Sukhoi and Andrei Tupolev, went on to start their own design bureaus. They still exist, producing Russian war materiel currently being used in Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine.

Chkalov's plane was painted in red, white, and blue and bore the name "Stalin's Route," a special honor bestowed by the man in the Kremlin himself. To save on weight, some systems, like wheel brakes, were removed, and any available cargo space was taken up with polar survival supplies to keep them alive for up to three weeks should an accident occur.

Chkalov and his crew avoided disaster, crossing the Barents Sea, Franz Joseph Land, the Pole, and Banks Island before sighting the Mackenzie River in Canada. From there, they turned at Sitka, Alaska (once the hub of Russian America), to trace the coast down. When they saw the docks and factories of Portland, Oregon, they followed the Willamette River south.

A hundred miles later, over Eugene, Oregon, Chkalov and his crew realized they were low on fuel and were likely not going to make it over the Cascades and into California. They turned back to Portland to land.

When, on the morning on June 20, Stalin's Route finally landed at Pearson Field at the U.S. Army installation at Fort Vancouver, just north of Portland, the crew had endured more than 63 hours and 5,670 miles in their plane. Exhausted, they climbed from the cabin. Army personnel secured the craft and offered the aviators a place to rest. They then contacted news agencies and the Soviet government to let them know Chkalov, Baidukov, and Belyakov were safe and sound.

Later that day, the trio were welcomed by Fort Vancouver's commander, Brigadier General George C. Marshall. They were soon whisked away for a cross-country tour, where they were met enthusiastically by officials across the U.S., including President Franklin Roosevelt. The U.S. had only formally recognized the Soviet Union in 1933, so it is hard to understate the magnitude of that meeting. As for the plane, Stalin's Route was disassembled and shipped back to Russia.

Back home, Chkalov and his team were honored with the highest awards Stalin could bestow. Chkalov's hometown, Vasilyeva Sloboda in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, was renamed Chkalovsk in his honor (the ANT-25 he flew to America is on display there today). When he died during a test flight in 1938, his ashes were scattered among other Soviet giants at the Kremlin Wall, the most hallowed burial ground in Moscow.

In America, however, the flight was largely forgotten, downplayed in the chaos of the Second World War and the distrust of the Cold War (in which the same officer who welcomed Chkalov played a major part).

In the 1970s, interest grew to immortalize the Soviet accomplishment with a monument. The concrete arch, which houses a handful of metal plaques, including two with the Izvestiya article reporting the flight in both English and Russian, was dedicated in 1975. Baidukov and Belyakov were both in attendance. The monument was the first in the U.S. to celebrate a Soviet accomplishment. In a speech at the unveiling, Baidukov said, "We brought friendship on the wings of that plane."

In 1995, Chkalov received possibly the highest honor of all: a Moscow metro station named after him. It was decorated with aviation motifs.

Today, the site is still marked by the concrete monument. Right next door is a small hangar-museum telling the story of Pearson Field, the second-oldest continuously operating airfield in the U.S. (founded in 1911). It also includes several artifacts from the flight. The museum and monument are part of the larger Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, overseen by the National Parks Service. It is easily accessible, just off I-5 where the highway crosses into Washington over the Columbia River from Portland.

Appropriately, the Fort Vancouver bookstore has its fair share of Russian-themed souvenirs, including some great reads.