Stalin's falcon who flew nonstop over the North Pole to America, and fell on his final test flight
On 20 June 1937, when the ANT-25 rolled to a stop at Vancouver's Pearson Field and a U.S. Army officer asked where they'd come from, Chkalov said: 'From Moscow. Over the North Pole.'
Soviet test pilot and the public face of Soviet aviation in the 1930s. Testing Polikarpov I-15 and I-16 fighters, he devised the ascending spin and the slow barrel roll, new figures in aerobatic flight. His 1936 Moscow-to-Udd Island nonstop flight (9,374 km) earned him the title Hero of the Soviet Union, and the following year he commanded the same ANT-25 on the first nonstop transpolar flight from Moscow to Vancouver, USA, crossing 8,811 km in 63 hours and pioneering the polar air route. A mass celebrity whom Stalin personally greeted at the airfield, he died at 34 when the hastily readied Polikarpov I-180 prototype lost power on its maiden flight and crashed.
Career Timeline
- 1919–1921Aircraft mechanic, 4th Kanavino Aviation Park
- 1921–1924Trained at Yegoryevsk, Borisoglebsk, Moscow, and Serpukhov flight schools
- 1924–1930Fighter pilot, 1st Red Banner Fighter Squadron
- 1930–1933Test pilot, Red Army Air Forces Research Institute (NII VVS)
- 1933–1938Test pilot, Aircraft Plant No. 39 (Polikarpov Design Bureau)
- 1935–1938Head, Stunt/Aerobatic Section, Soviet Air Force
- 1937–1938Deputy, Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1st convocation)