Valery Chkalov (Valery Pavlovich Chkalov, Валерий Павлович Чкалов; 2 February 1904 – 15 December 1938) was a Soviet test pilot and Hero of the Soviet Union. Abroad he is remembered above all as the commander of the crew that in June 1937 made the first non-stop flight from Moscow over the North Pole to the United States, landing at Vancouver, Washington, after 63 hours and 16 minutes in the air.[1][24][25] A year earlier the same crew had flown non-stop from Moscow to the Soviet Far East, a distance greater than the world non-stop record of the time, although it was not recognised as a record.[4][17]

Chkalov was born in Vasilyovo (Василёво), a village on the Volga in the Nizhny Novgorod province, which was renamed Chkalovsk in his honour in 1937. He entered aviation as a fitter at an aircraft depot in Kanavino, now a district of Nizhny Novgorod — one of Russia's largest cities, which stands where the Oka flows into the Volga and in Soviet times was called Gorky.[1][5] Today the city's international airport bears his name, and his monument above the Volga stands at the top of the Chkalov Staircase, one of the city's symbols.[6][9]

Over the North Pole to America

In the early hours of 18 June 1937, Moscow time, the single-engined ANT-25, with Chkalov as pilot, Georgy Baidukov as co-pilot and Alexander Belyakov as navigator, took off from Shchyolkovo airfield near Moscow.[39][26] The aircraft, painted red and grey and carrying the words "Stalin's Route" on its side, had a wingspan of about 34 metres (112 feet) and more than 2,000 US gallons of fuel on board.[26] Its goal was the San Francisco Bay area, where the Soviet ambassador, Alexander Troyanovsky, was waiting for the crew.[25][35]

The flight went in much harder conditions than the year before — without visibility and with icing of the aircraft.[5] After more than two and a half days in the air, with fuel running low and fog over the coast, the crew turned back north near Eugene, Oregon.[25][31] Over Portland's Swan Island airport they saw a huge crowd waiting for them and, afraid that souvenir hunters would tear the aircraft apart, crossed the Columbia River to the small Army airfield of Vancouver Barracks.[24][32] The ANT-25 landed at Pearson Field, Vancouver, Washington, at 8:22 a.m. on Sunday 20 June 1937, having covered 5,288 miles (about 8,500 km) in 63 hours and 16 minutes; only about eleven gallons of fuel were left in its tanks.[24][32][35] The sealed barograph was later sent to France so that the non-stop flight could be verified.[25]

Only the regular guards were on the field when the aircraft touched down; they woke a Russian-speaking ROTC student, George Kotzmetsky, to act as interpreter.[24][25] The commander of Vancouver Barracks, Brigadier General George C. Marshall, took the three airmen to his house on Officers' Row, where they bathed, had breakfast and went to sleep. In his letters Marshall wrote that the only difficulty was "getting them complete civilian outfits, altered and all, on a Sunday afternoon", and that "three different broadcast setups were established in the house that evening", as more than 60 reporters and radio staff crowded in; Ambassador Troyanovsky, who travelled to Vancouver Barracks to greet the crew, also stayed with the Marshalls.[27] TIME magazine reported that the exhausted fliers "drank his cognac, gobbled his breakfast, used his razor, then fell into his beds while the world applauded".[31]

According to a resolution later adopted by the Washington State House of Representatives, Chkalov spoke on NBC radio from the balcony of Marshall's residence, comparing the Volga and the Columbia, rivers "which flow on the same planet and ultimately merge into one and the same World Ocean".[34] The next day Marshall held a parade in the fliers' honour at Vancouver Barracks and, with the ambassador and Oregon Governor Charles H. Martin, accompanied them in a parade through Portland and at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon; a Portland department store fitted them with new suits and put their fur flying coats on display.[27][28]

A tour of the United States followed, with a stop in San Francisco, a ticker-tape parade in New York and a reception at the White House.[28] President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the crew, accompanied by the Soviet ambassador, in his office at noon on 28 June 1937.[29][30] The fliers returned home through France; the aircraft was dismantled and shipped to Paris for display, and then to Moscow.[26][28] In America, speaking to reporters about his crew, Chkalov said that his co-pilot Baidukov was a pilot of a higher class and that it was Baidukov who had flown the aircraft "blind" through the clouds.

Last week skeptics were confounded when a Russian plane nonchalantly flew non-stop from Moscow to the U. S. via the North Pole.

— TIME, 28 June 1937[31]

A few weeks later a second ANT-25, flown by Mikhail Gromov, Andrei Yumashev and Sergei Danilin, repeated the transpolar crossing and on 14 July 1937 landed in a farmer's field near San Jacinto, California.[28] After the Chkalov flight a group of Vancouver civic leaders sent a letter to Joseph Stalin proposing closer ties; no reply came, and the letter was found in the Russian diplomatic archives 56 years later.[25]

Vasilyovo: the backwater, the school and the steamer Bayan

Valery (christened Valerian) Pavlovich Chkalov was born on 20 January (2 February, New Style) 1904 in the village of Vasilyovo, in the Purekh volost of the Balakhna district of the Nizhny Novgorod province; today it is the town of Chkalovsk.[1][5] His father was a boilermaker at the state workshops of the Vasilyovo backwater, a winter harbour and repair yard for Volga vessels; his mother kept the house.[5] The house in which the future pilot was born was built by his father in 1896 and is now a heritage site of federal importance.[3]

His mother died when the boy was six.[5] At seven Valery went to the Vasilyovo primary school, where his teachers noted his analytical and mathematical abilities, although his marks were average.[5] In 1916 he finished the four classes of the village school, and his father sent the twelve-year-old to a vocational school in Cherepovets, where he studied until 1918.[1] Times were hungry: without finishing his studies, Valery returned home, his father took him on as a labourer, and the broad-shouldered fifteen-year-old worked on an equal footing with the adults.

In 1918–1919 Chkalov worked as a hammerman in the Vasilyovo backwater and as a stoker on the dredger Volzhskaya No. 21 and on the steamer Bayan, which sailed on the Volga.[1] In 1919 the fifteen-year-old first saw an aircraft at close quarters and, in his own words, fell in love with the sky for the rest of his life.[5]

I looked at this bird I had never seen before, admired its varnished planes and the gleam of the metal parts of its engine, delighted in its beautiful, clean lines, and dreamed of flying in it. Was I the only one to whom the aeroplane seemed some fairy-tale bird, gliding easily over the Volga, over fields and forests? My childhood dreams of doing something special, daring and brave now came down to one thing: to fly!

— Valery Chkalov[5]

Kanavino: first job in aviation

Leaving the steamer, Chkalov came to Nizhny Novgorod and in September 1919 joined the Red Army.[1][5] Until 1921 he worked as a fitter repairing and assembling aircraft at the 4th Aviation Park in Kanavino, then a separate town and now a district of Nizhny Novgorod.[1] The way there was opened for him by a fellow villager, Vladimir Frolishchev, who was a foreman of aircraft assembly at the Fourth Kanavino Aviation Park.[12]

The work was rough: an assistant fitter braided cables, varnished wings and fuselages, helped the mechanics with repairs and studied the technical descriptions of engines.[5] The diligent young man was noticed: pilots and mechanics began taking him up with them, and soon he was sent to the Yegoryevsk Military Theoretical School of the Air Force.[5]

Flying schools

Chkalov graduated from the Yegoryevsk school in April 1923.[1] Besides aviation subjects, he had to study physics, mathematics, Russian and political literacy; in mathematics he showed exceptional ability and learned through understanding rather than by rote.

At the end of April 1923, forty-five cadets from Yegoryevsk arrived in Borisoglebsk, where the 2nd Military School of Pilots was only being formed, and Chkalov was among them.[19] The school occupied the old barracks of a cavalry division, the aircraft were parked beside the riding halls, and the cadets' first job was to convert one of the halls into a hangar.[19] Chkalov studied the Avro training aircraft and was placed in the first flying group, which took only ten men.[19] Among the school's instructors were many veterans of the Civil War, and the cadets listened to their stories like a textbook — about the first Red military pilots who had fought at Tsaritsyn and Petrograd, on the Southern Front, in Turkestan and at Kakhovka.[22]

The road to the first flight began with taxiing runs on a Morane-Parasol whose wings had been shortened and partly stripped of fabric, so that the aircraft ran across the field without leaving the ground and the cadet learned to keep a straight line on take-off and landing runs.[19][22] Chkalov did these exercises superbly. The summer of 1923 was spent in training flights; he made his first solo flight flawlessly and was the first in his group to fly alone.[19] In October 1923 Chkalov graduated among the best ten; his evaluation read: "Chkalov is an example of a thoughtful and attentive pilot, who was circumspect and disciplined in completing the flying programme."[19][1]

Then came the 1st Higher School of Pilots in Moscow (May 1924) and the Higher Military Aviation School of Aerial Gunnery and Bombing in Serpukhov, where a group of pilots arrived on 27 May 1924.[1][5] After the course the command received the following conclusion about Chkalov: "Completed training with the grade 'very good'. As a pilot and as a person very calm. Slow to grasp, but learns well. No breaches of discipline observed."[5] In his free time Chkalov played for the flying school's football team — founded in 1923, it more than once won city, district and Air Force school competitions — and took part in amateur performances.[19]

Sometimes you sit in the training aircraft in the instructor's seat and feel how this lad, who has not yet flown even ten hours, makes the machine obey his will and rules over it.

— Flight detachment commander N. F. Popov about cadet Chkalov[5]

Leningrad and Bryansk: "hooliganism in the air"

From June 1924 Chkalov served as a military fighter pilot in Leningrad, in the Red Banner Aviation Squadron named after P. N. Nesterov. Here he proved a bold, even daring pilot; his flights were often openly experimental, which his superiors classed as "hooliganism in the air", and for his risky escapades Chkalov was periodically grounded.[5] His immediate commander, the instructor Nikolai Shelukhin, wrote of him: "Chkalov is a good pilot, but an exceptionally undisciplined person; he does not want to carry out instructions, demands and orders."[17]

In February 1927 Chkalov married Olga Orekhova, a Leningrad schoolteacher.[5] In April 1928 he was transferred to Bryansk, to the 15th Aviation Brigade; his wife and their son Igor stayed in Leningrad.[5] In Bryansk Chkalov's aircraft struck railway wires: the pilot escaped with scratches and a bruised knee, but the machine was beyond repair.[5] He was found guilty, sentenced to a year in prison and discharged from the Red Army.[5][1] In January 1929 he was in Bryansk prison and was then pardoned;[1] according to other accounts the sentence was made suspended.[5]

In 1929–1930 Chkalov worked as a flying instructor in Leningrad — according to some sources at a flying club,[1] according to others as head of the glider school of Osoaviakhim, the Soviet civil defence and aviation society.[5][17] In November 1930 he was restored to his military rank and sent to the Air Force Scientific Research and Test Institute in Moscow.[1][5]

Test pilot

In two years at the Air Force test institute Chkalov made more than 800 test flights and mastered 30 types of aircraft.[5] On 31 December 1931 he took part in the first flight of the Zveno-1 system — a TB-1 heavy bomber carrying two I-4 fighters on its wings;[1] such "mother ships" later carried up to five fighters on the wings and fuselage. At the same time he carried out the state trials of the I-5 fighter.[1]

From January 1933 Chkalov was a test pilot at Moscow aircraft plant No. 39 named after V. R. Menzhinsky and at the design bureau of Nikolai Polikarpov. He made the first flights and tests of the best fighters of the decade — the I-15 biplane and the I-16 monoplane — carried out spin tests of the I-16 and tested the experimental I-17, and flew the VIT-1 and VIT-2 anti-tank aircraft;[1] he also tested the TB-1 and TB-3 heavy bombers. Of his fourteen years in aviation he gave eight to test work, and about seventy different designs passed through his hands.[2]

The serial I-16 was built in Gorky: production of Polikarpov's fighter began at aircraft plant No. 21 in April 1934, and the first examples were tested by the plant's chief pilot, V. P. Chkalov.[15][14] The present-day Sokol Aircraft Plant in Nizhny Novgorod traces its history to this enterprise; in the three preceding years it had built 661 I-5 fighters — four out of every five made in the country.[15][14]

On 5 May 1935 the aircraft designer Nikolai Polikarpov and the test pilot Valery Chkalov were awarded the Order of Lenin, the highest Soviet decoration, for creating the best fighter aircraft.[5][1]

Flying under a bridge: legend and fact

The most famous manoeuvre attributed to Chkalov is a flight under the Trinity Bridge (then the Kirov Bridge) in Leningrad, with the wheels almost touching the water.[17] The young pilot is said to have dedicated this risky turn to his future wife Olga Orekhova and to have paid for it with fifteen days in the guardhouse; the local historian Zoya Priporova, who studied Chkalov's biography for many years, believes that the manoeuvre later saved the lives of many pilots who repeated it.[5]

Some researchers are sceptical: no eyewitnesses have been found, and neither the exact date nor even the year is given in open sources.[5] The legend's persistence is linked with the film Valery Chkalov (1941), in which the flight under the bridge is shown in detail; in the film it was performed by the pilot Yevgeny Borisenko.[5] Chkalov did fly under a bridge in practice — only not in the centre of Leningrad.[5] His wife recalled it this way.

The aircraft faced inevitable destruction. The winter fog pressed it to the ground, the wings were iced up. All around was forest. Not far off was a railway bridge, with a train crossing it, barring the way to the only, miserable semblance of a landing ground. And Valery Chkalov landed the aircraft on this small saving island, flying under the arch of the railway bridge.

— Olga Chkalova, memoirs[5]
  • The upward spin — Chkalov mastered it on a Martinsyde by accident: he fell into a spin, recovered the aircraft just above the ground, then climbed and repeated the figure deliberately.[5]
  • The Immelmann turn on a Fokker D.XI — other pilots' aircraft stalled into a spin, but Chkalov performed it and explained to his comrades how it was done.[5]
  • The slow roll on the landing approach — having rolled the aircraft over, he glided upside down and rolled back just above the ground.[5]
  • Recovery from a dive with a climb in inverted flight, and the idea of ramming with the propeller, are also his.[2]

Two record flights

In the autumn of 1935 Chkalov's friend Georgy Baidukov, a test pilot at the Air Force test institute, came to see him at the plant and proposed organising a record flight from the USSR to the United States over the North Pole, with Chkalov as crew commander; the aircraft, the ANT-25, was named at once.[5] Chkalov had dreamed of long-distance flights before, but now there was a concrete proposal. In the spring of 1936 Chkalov, Baidukov and the navigator Alexander Belyakov submitted a request to the government, but at a meeting in June Stalin offered the pilots a different route — Moscow to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.[4][5]

The ANT-25, also known as RD (rekord dalnosti, "distance record"), was built under Andrei Tupolev, with Pavel Sukhoi and his team responsible for the design.[4] The planned flight time reached 75 hours, but the aircraft had a single engine, the M-34 designed by Alexander Mikulin, and its failure would have meant landing on water, rocks or tundra.[4]

On 5 July 1936 Chkalov flew to his native Vasilyovo, circled over the houses for a long time and waved to his fellow villagers from the cockpit.[4] On the eve of the flight he sent home, to Natalya Georgiyevna, a thousand roubles — a large sum at the time.[4]

Non-stop flights of Chkalov's crew in the ANT-25
FlightDatesRouteDistanceTime in the air
First20–22 July 1936Moscow — Franz Josef Land — Severnaya Zemlya — Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky — Udd Island[4]9,374 km[1][4]56 hours 20 minutes[1][4]
Second18–20 June 1937Moscow — North Pole — Vancouver, Washington[1][5]8,504 km in a straight line[1] (5,288 miles in US sources[24]); about 9,130 km along the route flown[5]63 hours 16 minutes[1][5][24]

1936: Moscow to Udd Island

The crew was ordered to fly non-stop from Moscow over the Barents Sea, Franz Josef Land and Cape Chelyuskin to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and, if conditions allowed, on to Nikolayevsk-on-Amur and Chita.[4] The flight log later counted nineteen changes of course: the straight line was broken by cyclones, cloud and detours around especially dangerous areas.[4] Because of oxygen starvation the pilots ate almost nothing for more than two days, and they could not sleep from excitement and lack of room.[4]

When it became clear that the aircraft would not reach its final point, Chkalov landed it on the wet shingle of Udd Island in the Sea of Okhotsk.[4] The 9,374 kilometres flown exceeded the world non-stop record of the time, 9,105 kilometres, but the record was not officially recognised: in those years only the straight-line distance counted.[17] On the island the words "Stalin's Route" were painted on the fuselage, and they were kept for the next flight.[4]

By a decree of 24 July 1936 Chkalov was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin; his Gold Star medal was No. 11.[1] Chkalov received a bonus of 30,000 roubles, Baidukov and Belyakov 20,000 each.[4] The islands in the Sea of Okhotsk were renamed: Udd became Chkalov Island, Langr became Baidukov Island and Kevos became Belyakov Island.[4]

1937: Moscow to the North Pole and Vancouver

Chkalov did not give up the idea of a flight to America, and in May 1937 permission was granted.[5] The flight itself and the crew's reception in the United States are described above. On their return to the USSR all three received the Order of the Red Banner; Chkalov's is dated 9 August 1937.[5][1]

Another gift for the flight was a Packard car — it still stands in the hangar pavilion of the museum in Chkalovsk next to the pilot's personal aircraft.[2] A private car was a rarity in those years, and Chkalov never drove alone: he would either pick up friends from the airfield or stop to give lifts to people on the road.

Deputy for the Gorky region

In December 1937 Chkalov was elected a deputy of the Soviet of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Soviet parliament, for the Gorky region and the Chuvash ASSR.[4][1] Earlier, in August 1937, the settlement of Vasilyovo had been renamed Chkalovsk at the request of its residents.[1]

The Soviet government gave the pilot a small aircraft, and he flew it around the Gorky region, dealing with the requests of his constituents.[4] He helped many of them with housing, medicines and their children's education; after the crash of 1938 notes were found in the pocket of his tunic listing what needed to be bought for a children's home he supported.[4]

He was offered high posts more than once, but he was drawn to the sky rather than to offices.[17] According to some accounts, in November 1938, a month before his death, Stalin offered him the post of People's Commissar for Internal Affairs; Chkalov did not dare refuse outright but said he first had to finish testing a new aircraft.[17] He never gave up test flying. He was promoted ahead of schedule: to colonel in July 1937 and to kombrig (brigade commander) in February 1938.[1]

The I-180: his last aircraft

By the beginning of 1938 the main Soviet fighter, the I-16, no longer met requirements. The Air Force's request for a new high-speed fighter with an air-cooled radial engine was the most urgent, and Nikolai Polikarpov, building on the I-16, quickly presented the I-180 design: in layout it differed little from its predecessor, but it had a higher speed and ceiling.[16] Construction began in the summer of 1938 in the workshops of aircraft plant No. 156; the deadlines were extremely tight, and the construction was hurried from above.[16] On 1 December 1938 Chkalov was urgently recalled from leave for the tests.

The head of the 1st Main Directorate of the People's Commissariat of the Defence Industry, S. I. Belyaikin, proposed releasing the aircraft for testing ahead of schedule.[16]

Let us greet the coming Party congress with labour successes — let us release the I-180 for flight tests ahead of schedule.

— S. I. Belyaikin, head of the 1st Main Directorate of the People's Commissariat of the Defence Industry, 1938[16]

15 December 1938

Polikarpov was categorically against the haste and refused to sign the certificate of the aircraft's readiness for its first flight; on 14 December the certificate was signed without him, with the wording "The defects … cannot be an obstacle to the first flight…".[16] As early as 2 December 190 defects had been found in the assembled aircraft, ten days being allotted to correct them, and on 12 December the throttle rod broke during ground taxiing.[17] Nevertheless on 15 December Chkalov pushed through permission for the first flight — no one dared to stand in the hero's way.[17]

It was a bright, frosty and windy day, with about 25 degrees of frost.[17] The flight task was simple: a flight without retracting the undercarriage, with speed limits, over the Central Airfield at an altitude of 600 metres;[16] according to another account, one circuit over the airfield and a landing.[17][18] After one circuit Chkalov did not land but went round again and left the airfield area.[17] The story that he flew over Stalin's nearby dacha rests on retellings and has no documentary confirmation.

On the second circuit the engine failed. Gliding, Chkalov tried to reach the runway, but the distance was too great, and the I-180 crashed about a kilometre from the airfield.[17] The commissions of 1938 and 1955 named the cause as "engine failure as a result of its overcooling and the unreliable design of the throttle control":[17] the experimental air-cooled M-88 engine[23] had no front cooling shutters, became overcooled in the frost and stalled when the pilot tried to change its power setting. Seeing that the aircraft would not clear the residential buildings, the pilot turned aside — the investigation established that he controlled the aircraft to the last and did everything to take it away from the houses.[5]

The aircraft was found on the territory of a timber yard (13 Magistralnaya Street) near the Khoroshevskoye Highway. While descending, the aircraft caught and broke wires on the territory of the yard and, turning, crashed into a pile of timber waste. On impact Comrade Chkalov was thrown forward 10–15 metres together with the tail section of the fuselage, the controls and the seat. The front part of the aircraft was smashed. There was no fire. Comrade Chkalov was immediately picked up, still alive, by workers of the yard and taken to the Botkin Hospital, where he died a few minutes later.

— From the report of the management of aircraft plant No. 156 to Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, December 1938[17]

After the crash

According to the plant management's report, Chkalov died a few minutes after reaching the hospital;[17] according to other accounts, two hours later, from his injuries: in the crash the pilot was thrown out of the cockpit and struck his head on metal fittings that, by a fatal chance, lay at the site.[5] Chkalov was buried in Moscow: the urn with his ashes was placed in the Kremlin Wall on Red Square.[1] A memorial stone stands at the site of his death, by the Khoroshevskoye Highway.[1][17]

On 16 December 1938 all radio stations of the Soviet Union broadcast the government announcement of the death of "the great pilot of our time, Hero of the Soviet Union Comrade Valery Pavlovich Chkalov while testing a new aircraft".[17] According to eyewitnesses, the pilot's last words were: "Do not blame anyone for what happened; I am to blame myself."[17]

Immediately after the crash about forty people were arrested, among them Polikarpov's deputy, the aircraft designer Dmitry Tomashevich, the director of plant No. 156 Mikhail Usachev, the head of the flight test station Colonel Viktor Porai, the head of the aviation industry directorate Semyon Belyaikin and others involved in the tests. Usachev and Belyaikin received fifteen years each, Porai ten; Tomashevich and Usachev were brought back in 1943, when the aviation industry needed experienced specialists.[17] The investigation showed that the I-180 had not been ready for flight tests.[18]

In 1955, on the decision of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office, Chkalov's death was investigated again — the authorities were checking a conspiracy theory. The commission's conclusions were practically the same: a "raw aircraft" had been sent on a test flight, and the responsibility lay with the designers and with the pilot himself.[18] The theory that the pilot was deliberately eliminated returned to the press at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s; Chkalov's children supported it, but no one has produced convincing evidence.[17][18]

On 28 December 1938, by order of the People's Commissar of Defence Kliment Voroshilov, Chkalov's name was given to the Borisoglebsk aviation school, from which he had graduated fifteen years earlier.[19]

Hero of the Soviet Union, known to the whole world for his record flights, Kombrig Chkalov died only because the new fighter that Kombrig Chkalov was testing had been released for its test flight in a completely unsatisfactory condition, of which Chkalov was fully aware.

— Kliment Voroshilov, order "On measures to prevent accidents in units of the Red Army Air Force", June 1939[18]

How he was remembered

Chkalov had many friends; he was respected for his directness, strength of character, sensitivity and readiness to help a comrade. Once, when money began to be deducted from a pilot's pay for the repair of an aircraft he had damaged, Chkalov paid for him without a second thought. In 1937 he secured the release of two technicians arrested after an accident, proving that it had been caused not by them but by a manufacturing defect.

At home he was a hospitable host who loved generous dinners: the singer Ivan Kozlovsky and the writer Mikhail Sholokhov, the actors Ivan Moskvin and Vasily Kachalov, and the writers Alexei Tolstoy and Mikhail Prishvin visited the Chkalovs.[5]

The family had three children — a son, Igor, and daughters Valeria and Olga; the youngest was born in 1939, after her father's death.[4][5] When he married Olga Orekhova, Chkalov asked her for only two connected things: to let him fly and not to worry about him.[5] Olga Erazmovna lived almost a hundred years and never remarried, explaining that she had never met anyone like Valery Pavlovich.[4][5]

From the Volga to the Columbia

The Vancouver landing made Chkalov a figure of local history in the American Pacific Northwest. In 1974 two Soviet sailors whose ship had docked at the Port of Vancouver asked for directions to the monument to Chkalov and his crew; there was none, and their question revived local interest in the flight.[25]

On 20 June 1975, the 38th anniversary of the landing, Vancouver dedicated what The New York Times described as "what is believed to be the first monument in the United States honoring an achievement of Soviet citizens".[32] Baidukov, then 69, and Belyakov, 78, attended, together with Chkalov's son Igor and his daughters Valeria and Olga; also present were the Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, the Governor of Washington Dan Evans, a representative of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the city's mayor of 1937, more than twenty Soviet journalists and a crowd of about 1,400.[25][32] The celebrations were financed by many patrons, including the Boeing Company, the Soviet government and a local filling station.[32] The veterans presented the city with a copy of their flight diary in Russian, a model of the aircraft and a bust of Chkalov, and the city named a new street Chkalov Drive — according to local officials, the only unnamed street left in Clark County.[32] Chkalov Drive runs in east Vancouver, just east of Interstate 205 and south of Mill Plain Boulevard.[36]

I am fulfilling a mission granted me by my motherland.

— Igor Chkalov at the dedication of the monument in Vancouver, 20 June 1975[32]

Three days later, on 23 June 1975, President Gerald Ford received Belyakov, Baidukov and Igor Chkalov at the White House; Belyakov presented the President with a model of the ANT-25.[33]

The Chkalov Transpolar Flight Monument, a concrete arch with plaques, first stood beside State Highway 14 near the old runway; today it stands just west of the Pearson Air Museum, within the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site.[26][32] The museum keeps items connected with the flight, many of them donated by the fliers' families, including Chkalov's Hero of the Soviet Union medal.[24]

The anniversaries of the landing are marked in Vancouver to this day. The 50th anniversary in 1987 brought members of the pilots' families to the city;[25] in 2011 the pilot's grandson, also named Valery Chkalov, visited Vancouver ahead of the 75th anniversary.[37] In 2012 the Washington State House of Representatives adopted a resolution honouring the flight and the local committees that had kept its memory since 1975, and a floral tribute was laid at 8:22 a.m., the minute of the landing.[34][35] In 2017, for the 80th anniversary, the National Park Service and its partners held a programme with representatives of the Russian consulate in Seattle, and the visitor centre of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site displayed paintings of Chkalovsk, the pilot's birthplace on the Volga, by artists living in the Chkalovsk area.[38][25]

The link also runs the other way. In the summer of 2021 a concrete fence near the Chkalovskaya metro station in Nizhny Novgorod was turned into a mural showing Chkalov, Baidukov and Belyakov and the route Moscow — North Pole — Vancouver.[12]

Memory in Nizhny Novgorod

The monument on the Volga slope

Until the 1940s the site of the present staircase was part of the Volga slope, the Otkos — a popular viewpoint and a favourite walking place of the townspeople.[9] Chkalov came here more than once and, together with his friend the sculptor Isaak Mendelevich, chose a site for a monument to Maxim Gorky; Mendelevich settled on the platform by the St George's Tower of the Kremlin.[9] By a turn of fate, a monument to Chkalov himself was erected on this spot: after the pilot's death the people of Gorky petitioned the authorities to commemorate him in his home region.[9]

The monument was unveiled in December 1940, on the second anniversary of his death, on the Upper Volga Embankment (Верхне-Волжская набережная) by Minin and Pozharsky Square, and became one of the city's landmarks. Sources give different dates: 15 December[7] or 19 December.[9] The sculptor was Isaak Mendelevich, the architects Viktor Andreyev and Ivan Taranov; the figure was cast at the Monumentskulptura plant in Leningrad, about fifty thousand people gathered for the ceremony, and in 1942 the sculptor received a Stalin Prize for the work.[7]

The bronze pilot in flying overalls stands on three granite steps, pulling a long flying glove onto one hand. On the polished surface of the pedestal the outline of a map of the Northern Hemisphere is engraved, with the routes of both flights marked by dotted lines — to the Far East and over the North Pole to America.[8] The inscription "To Valery Chkalov, the great pilot of our time" survives; beneath it the holes of the fixings can be seen — there stood the words "Stalin's falcon", removed during the campaign against the personality cult.[8][7] The monument was taken under state protection in 1960 and restored in 1975.[7]

Everything about him was expressive: the forehead, the fair hair lying on it, the sharply outlined lips, the strong nose, the stubborn chin.

— The sculptor Isaak Mendelevich about Chkalov[5]

The Chkalov Staircase

The idea of a great staircase on the Volga slope was put forward in 1939 by the chairman of the Gorky city executive committee, Alexander Shulpin: the new staircase was to surpass the Potemkin Stairs in Odessa and become the city's gateway to the Volga.[9] The war prevented it. The rebuilding of the city after the bombing raids began in 1943, and Shulpin's proposal was remembered. The grand project with fountains, cascades, vases, statues and flower beds had to be replaced by a much more modest one, but Shulpin achieved the almost impossible — funding in wartime. Moscow allocated money for construction in honour of the victory at Stalingrad and approved the design of the Leningrad architects Alexander Yakovlev, Lev Rudnev and Vladimir Munts.[9] In the same year, 1943, landslides began on the slope, and the staircase strengthened it.[9] Because of the shortage of labour, German prisoners of war were brought in to build it.

The The Chkalov Staircase was ceremonially opened in 1949.[9][8] Officially it was called the Volga Staircase, but in the 1980s the popular name, taken from the monument on its upper tier, replaced the official one. Nizhny Novgorod residents still argue about the number of steps: guidebooks give 560, others count 680, including the steps on both sides of the "figure of eight".[8][9] In 1985 the boat Geroy ("Hero"), which had belonged to the Volga Military Flotilla and took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, was installed at its foot.[9]

For the city's 800th anniversary the staircase was reconstructed and reopened on 1 August 2021; that evening it became a stage for the symphony orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre.[9] The slope was reinforced with twenty-seven bored piles twenty metres long, the crumbling steps were replaced while two historic flights were preserved, the brickwork was repaired, the retaining walls were strengthened, a colour close to the historical one was restored, and architectural lighting was added.[9]

The staircase has its own custom: on Fridays Nizhny Novgorod bridegrooms carry their brides up the steps in their arms — such an ascent is believed to promise a strong marriage.[8]

The museum in Chkalovsk

The Memorial Museum of V. P. Chkalov in Chkalovsk, the centre of the Chkalovsky District, opened to visitors on 7 July 1940.[2] The complex includes the memorial house where the pilot was born and grew up and a hangar pavilion with a collection of aircraft; each of the seven sections of the house museum tells of a separate period of his life.[2]

The centre of the hangar is occupied by Tupolev's ANT-25, which took part in both flights; today it is a monument of science and technology of the first category.[2][4] Beside it stand the I-16 and I-17 (TsKB-15) fighters — the experimental I-17 was never mass-produced, but in 1936 it was shown at an international exhibition in Paris — a MiG-15bis jet as the embodiment of Chkalov's dream of great speeds, the pilot's personal U-2 (Po-2) aircraft, given to him by the government for the first non-stop flight, and the Packard car.[2]

The aircraft's journey to Chkalovsk was a story in itself. In 1940 the ANT-25 was taken to Moscow, and at the end of 1941, as the enemy advanced on the capital, it was urgently evacuated by rail to Pravdinsk station, the nearest to Chkalovsk. From there it was transported in parts: first the engine, undercarriage, fairings and tail unit by horse-drawn carts, and in the spring of 1942 the centre section and wings by barge.[4]

On 25 July 2026 the museum reopened after a comprehensive renovation, timed to the 90th anniversary of the Moscow — Udd Island flight.[3] More than 64.6 million roubles from the regional and local budgets were spent on restoring the facades, porches, veranda and balcony with their wooden decoration, the roof, stoves, windows, doors and floors; the exhibition space grew by about seventy square metres, and the second floor of the Chkalov house was opened to the general public for the first time.[3] The first stage of the work took place in 2024, for the pilot's 120th anniversary, when the museum also received new display equipment and five interactive installations — among them "Interactive Map: Chkalov's Name on the Map of Russia" and "The Chkalov Family Tree".[3]

Chkalov's name in Nizhny Novgorod

Chkalov Airport. The pilot's name was given to Nizhny Novgorod's airport at Strigino by a decree of the President of Russia of 31 May 2019, No. 246, "On naming airports after persons of special merit to the Fatherland".[6] The decision was based on the 2018 nationwide contest "Great Names of Russia", after which 45 Russian airports received the names of outstanding compatriots; the shortlist for the Nizhny Novgorod airport included Valery Chkalov, Maxim Gorky and Kuzma Minin, and more than six million people took part in the vote.[5] In 2021 a permanent exhibition devoted to the pilot opened at the airport (Chkalov Airport).[6]

Chkalovskaya metro station opened on 20 November 1985 as part of the first section of the Nizhny Novgorod Metro, Moskovskaya — Proletarskaya; a bust of the pilot stands in one of its halls, and the station is named after Chkalov Street.[20] The street runs through the Kanavinsky District: tram tracks were laid on it in 1896, the year tram service began in the city, when it was called the Exhibition Highway and led to the site of the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition.[21] Since 12 September 2026 the tracks have been under reconstruction, due to be completed in 2027.[21]

The mural. In the summer of 2021, near Chkalovskaya station on October Revolution Street, the concrete fence of a car park was turned into a mural: a team of six led by the Nizhny Novgorod graffiti artist LexusOne painted portraits of Chkalov, Baidukov and Belyakov and a map of the Moscow — North Pole — Vancouver flight, in colours that imitate an aged photograph of the 1930s.[12] The project's key phrase was Chkalov's motto "If you are to be, then be the first".[12]

The V. P. Chkalov Palace of Children's Creativity is the former Palace of Pioneers and Schoolchildren, ceremonially opened on 30 April 1937 in the building of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Peasant Land Bank at the corner of Piskunova and Ulyanova streets.[11][10] Its first clubs were for aircraft modelling, ship modelling, driving, military shooting and radio design, and in 1951 the first children's swimming pool in Russia opened there.[11] Chkalov's name was fixed in the title in 1992, when the palace became the V. P. Chkalov City Palace of Youth Creativity.[11]

During the Great Patriotic War — the Soviet part of the Second World War — the workers of the Gorky aircraft plant collected 2.8 million roubles for a "Valery Chkalov" squadron.[14] By the end of 1941 the plant's share of the country's total fighter output was 34–38 per cent.[15]

The pilot's 120th anniversary in 2024 made the Nizhny Novgorod region the centre of the jubilee celebrations: 42 events with a total budget of 450 million roubles were held in three areas — restoration of sites connected with Chkalov's name, a programme of events and educational projects.[13] The museum in Chkalovsk and the hangar with the aircraft, the House of Culture named after the pilot and the monument to the hero were repaired; three murals were created in Chkalovsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow; in summer the jubilee festival "Russian Wings" was held, and in spring the annual Chkalov fishing contest.[13]

On 20 July 2026, the 90th anniversary of the Moscow — Far East flight, people brought flowers to the Chkalov monument on Minin and Pozharsky Square; among them was the pilot's first cousin once removed, Alexei Chkalov, the author of more than ten books about his famous relative.[4]

Chkalov's name on the map of Nizhny Novgorod and the region
PlaceWhereSince
V. P. Chkalov Memorial MuseumChkalovsk, 5 Chkalov Streetopened 7 July 1940[2]
Chkalov MonumentNizhny Novgorod, Volga slope by the St George's Tower of the KremlinDecember 1940[7][9]
Chkalov Staircasefrom the monument down to the Lower Volga Embankmentbegun 1943, opened 1949[9]
Town of Chkalovskformer village of VasilyovoAugust 1937[1]
V. P. Chkalov Palace of Children's CreativityNizhny Novgorod, corner of Piskunova and Ulyanova streetsname since 1992[11]
Chkalovskaya metro stationKanavinsky District of Nizhny Novgorod20 November 1985[20]
V. P. Chkalov AirportNizhny Novgorod, Strigino31 May 2019[6]

The name on the map of the country

Chkalov's name spread widely across the country: it is borne by streets in many towns, a motor ship on the Volga, houses of culture and collective farms, schools and educational institutions.[1] There are Chkalov streets in the Kanavinsky District of Nizhny Novgorod, in the Fokinsky District of Bryansk, in Voronezh, Borisoglebsk and Zhukovsky near Moscow.

  • Orenburg was called Chkalov from 1938 to 1957, when the city's historical name was restored.[1]
  • From 1956 to 2016 the town of Buston in the Sughd Region of Tajikistan was called Chkalovsk.[1]
  • There are metro stations named after Chkalov in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and St Petersburg; in Tashkent the station of his name is now called Dustlik.[1]
  • His name was borne by the Novosibirsk Aviation Production Association, one of the country's largest aircraft plants.[1]
  • The Borisoglebsk pilots' school received Chkalov's name on 28 December 1938, two weeks after his death.[19]
  • Chkalov's name was borne by the Gorky Civil Engineering Institute, now the Nizhny Novgorod State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.[1]
  • Monuments to Chkalov stand in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Kstovo, Chkalovsk, Zhukovsky, Zvenigorod and Khimki, as well as in Kyiv, Dnipro (formerly Dnipropetrovsk) and Odesa.[1]
  • Busts stand in Kazan, Lipetsk, St Petersburg, Borisoglebsk and Chkalovsk.[1]
  • A Tu-160 strategic bomber of the Russian Long-Range Aviation and an Aeroflot Il-96-300 airliner were named after him.[1]
  • Outside the former Soviet Union, a street in Vancouver, Washington, USA — Chkalov Drive — has borne his name since 1975.[32]

Books and films

Chkalov was himself an author: Our Flight in the ANT-25 (1936, co-authored), Three Days in the Air (1937, co-authored), The Story of Our Flight (1937), Two Flights (1938), Our Transpolar Flight Moscow — North Pole — North America (1938), To the Pioneers and Schoolchildren of the Soviet Country (1940), My Life Belongs to the Motherland (1954) and Stalin's Route (2013).[1]

In English, the story of the 1937 flight was told by his co-pilot Georgy Baidukov in Over the North Pole (New York, 1938), with a preface by the Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson.[40] Baidukov's biography of his commander was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press as Russian Lindbergh: The Life of Valery Chkalov (1991), and Chkalov's daughter Valeria published Chkalov: Vancouver USA's Russian Hero (2007).[41][42]

The first feature film about the pilot was Valery Chkalov (1941); several more films, including documentaries, appeared in Soviet times, and in modern Russia the television series Chkalov was made with Yevgeny Dyatlov in the title role.[5] Even in his lifetime Chkalov became the idol of Soviet boys; pilots of the Second World War repeated his aerobatic figures, and many took a photograph of Valery Pavlovich into the cockpit for luck.[5]

Local books keep his memory too: the Nizhny Novgorod writer Valentin Lukin published the collection Short Stories About a Great Pilot.

See also

Sources

  1. warheroes.ru — Heroes of the Country, a biographical reference on Heroes of the Soviet Union — "Hero of the Soviet Union Chkalov Valery Pavlovich" (in Russian) (archive)
  2. vchkalov.ru — V. P. Chkalov Memorial Museum (Chkalovsk), official website (in Russian)
  3. nobl.ru — Government of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast — "The V. P. Chkalov Memorial Museum has reopened in Chkalovsk after major repairs" (in Russian)
  4. nn.aif.ru — AiF Nizhny Novgorod — "They achieved the impossible. 90 years since Chkalov's Moscow — Far East flight" (in Russian)
  5. ar-goj.ru — Chkalov International Airport of Nizhny Novgorod, special project about the pilot — "Valery Chkalov. A life in flight" (in Russian) (archive)
  6. ar-goj.ru — Chkalov International Airport of Nizhny Novgorod, official website — "History of the Nizhny Novgorod International Airport named after V. P. Chkalov" (in Russian) (archive)
  7. NIA Nizhny Novgorod — "The monument to Valery Chkalov was erected in Nizhny Novgorod exactly 70 years ago, on 15 December 1940" (in Russian) (archive)
  8. nn-grad.ru — Tourist portal of Nizhny Novgorod — "The Chkalov Staircase" (in Russian) (archive)
  9. nizhny800.ru — "Nizhny 800", the project for the city's 800th anniversary, section "Symbols 800" — "The Chkalov Staircase" (in Russian) (archive)
  10. nizhny800.ru — "Nizhny 800", section "Symbols 800" — "The Chkalov Palace of Pioneers" (in Russian) (archive)
  11. ddt-chkalov.ru — V. P. Chkalov Palace of Children's Creativity, official website — "History of the Palace" (in Russian) (archive)
  12. the-village.ru — The Village Nizhny Novgorod — "A mural in memory of Valery Chkalov: what the art object looks like and who created it" (in Russian) (archive)
  13. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — "450 million roubles will be spent on celebrating Chkalov's anniversary in the Nizhny Novgorod region" (in Russian) (archive)
  14. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — "The home front of the war: every third fighter was produced at the Gorky plant" (in Russian) (archive)
  15. aviation21.ru — "Aviation of Russia" — "Nizhny Novgorod Sokol Aircraft Plant" (in Russian) (archive)
  16. cmvvs.ru — Central Air Force Museum (Monino) — "1938. The first flight of the I-180 fighter. The crash and death of V. P. Chkalov" (in Russian) (archive)
  17. Lenta.ru — "The heavenly rebel. How the daring pilot Chkalov became the idol of millions, a headache for his superiors and Stalin's favourite" (in Russian) (archive)
  18. aif.ru — Argumenty i Fakty — "A conspiracy theory in flight. How did Chkalov really die?" (in Russian) (archive)
  19. bvvaul.ru — Borisoglebsk Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots named after V. P. Chkalov, history website — "History of the school. The pre-war years" (in Russian) (archive)
  20. GiperNN — "Chkalovskaya metro station in Nizhny Novgorod named one of the most beautiful in the USSR" (in Russian) (archive)
  21. nobl.ru — Government of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast — "Reconstruction of the tram tracks on Chkalov Street will begin on 12 September" (in Russian)
  22. bvvaul.ru — Borisoglebsk Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots, history website — "Chkalov Valery Pavlovich" (in Russian) (archive)
  23. aviadejavu.ru — reprint of V. B. Shavrov's reference book "History of Aircraft Designs in the USSR, 1938–1950" — "Polikarpov I-180" (in Russian)
  24. HistoryLink.org — Bill Alley, "Soviet ANT-25 completes first transpolar airplane flight from the Soviet Union to the United States (Vancouver) on June 20, 1937", Essay 7208, 2005 (corrected 2017) (archive)
  25. U.S. National Park Service — "A Red Bolt from the Blue: Valery Chkalov and the World's First Transpolar Flight", adapted from the Pearson Air Museum exhibit (archive)
  26. U.S. National Park Service — "Chkalov Transpolar Flight Monument", Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, 2020 (archive)
  27. George C. Marshall Foundation — "Marshall and the Soviet Aviators", 16 June 2017 (archive)
  28. The Museum of Flight (Seattle) — Archives, "Guide to the Russian Transpolar Flight Collection", historical note (archive)
  29. FDR Presidential Library — "Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day": 28 June 1937, from the White House Stenographer's Diary
  30. Library of Congress — Harris & Ewing, "Soviet Flyers at White House", photograph with original caption, 28 June 1937 (LC-DIG-hec-22944) (archive)
  31. TIME — "Transport: 63 Hours 17 Minutes", 28 June 1937 (archive)
  32. The New York Times — Andrew H. Malcolm, "Coast City Hails 1937 Soviet Polar Flight", 21 June 1975 (archive)
  33. The American Presidency Project — Gerald R. Ford, "Remarks Following a Meeting With Soviet Transpolar Aviators", 23 June 1975 (archive)
  34. Washington State Legislature — House Journal, 62nd Legislature, 2012: House Resolution No. 4652 on the 75th anniversary of the Chkalov flight (archive)
  35. The Columbian — Tom Vogt, "Chkalov's 1937 flight celebrated at Pearson Air Museum", 20 June 2012 (archive)
  36. The Columbian — editorial "In Our View: Flight Big Part of Our History", 7 July 2017 (archive)
  37. The Oregonian — "Vancouver will honor 75th anniversary of flight", 9 December 2011 (archive)
  38. U.S. National Park Service — Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, news release on the programme for the 80th anniversary of the Chkalov flight, 15 June 2017 (archive)
  39. Russian Polar Research (AARI) — M. V. Dukalskaya, "The first trans-Arctic flight Moscow — North Pole — America", No. 2 (8), 2012, pp. 47–48 (in Russian)
  40. Open Library — catalogue record: Georgiy Baidukov, Over the North Pole, translated by Jessica Smith, preface by Vilhjalmur Stefansson. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938
  41. Open Library — catalogue record: Georgiy Baidukov, Russian Lindbergh: The Life of Valery Chkalov, translated by Peter Belov, edited by Von Hardesty. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991
  42. Open Library — catalogue record: Valeria Chkalova, Chkalov: Vancouver USA's Russian Hero, translated by Jess V. Frost. BookSurge Publishing, 2007