Valery Chkalov and the ANT-25, the transpolar flight from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington that began June eighteenth, nineteen thirty-seven

On June 18, 1937, three Soviet airmen took off from Moscow in a single-engine aircraft called the ANT-25 and flew straight over the North Pole, landing roughly 63 hours later at Pearson Field in Vancouver, Washington. Pilot Valery Chkalov, co-pilot Georgy Baidukov, and navigator Alexander Belyakov covered more than 5,500 miles across territory no one had ever flown. It was the first transpolar flight from Europe to North America, and it remains one of the boldest long-distance flights in aviation history.

What Was the ANT-25?

The ANT-25 was a Soviet long-range aircraft designed by Andrei Tupolev, built around a single obsession: range. Every design choice served the goal of flying farther without stopping than anyone alive.

That priority explains its bizarre proportions. The wingspan stretched to roughly 113 feet on an airframe that weighed only a few tons empty, and most of that enormous wing was fuel tank. The aircraft was essentially a flying fuel reserve with a propeller bolted to the nose.

Power came from a single liquid-cooled V-12 engine, the M-34, producing around 900 horsepower at its best. One engine. Over the Arctic ice. If it failed, there was no grass strip waiting and no search-and-rescue coming.

Who Was Valery Chkalov?

Valery Chkalov was a Soviet test pilot as famous in the USSR as Charles Lindbergh was in the United States. He was brilliant, reckless, and a constant headache for his superiors.

He once flew a fighter under a bridge in Leningrad on purpose, and was jailed for it. The Soviet brass could never decide whether to court-martial him or decorate him, so over his career they did both.

His crew rounded out the cockpit. Georgy Baidukov was the instrument pilot, able to fly blind through cloud when Chkalov’s seat-of-the-pants instincts ran out of usefulness. Alexander Belyakov, an older man and a teacher, was the navigator responsible for charts, drift, and the cold arithmetic of position and course.

Why Was the Transpolar Route So Dangerous?

The route ran from Moscow, up over the Arctic ice, across the geographic North Pole, and down the far side of the planet into North America. People had died simply trying to reach the Pole. These three intended to fly clean over it and keep going.

The crew had attempted a version of the flight in 1936, but were forced to land short in the Soviet far north. That attempt proved the aircraft had the range, and in the summer of 1937 Joseph Stalin approved the transpolar attempt. Loaded so heavy with fuel that it could barely move, the ANT-25 used nearly the entire runway just to lift off.

The conditions inside were brutal:

Noise. With virtually no sound insulation, the roar of the V-12 a few feet from the crew’s knees became a physical pressure inside the skull, hour after hour.
Cold. The cabin was barely sealed. As they climbed to clear weather, the interior dropped below freezing and frost formed on the inside of the windows.
Oxygen. To top the Arctic weather systems, they climbed to 19,000–20,000 feet, where thin air causes confusion and then death. With a limited supply, the crew rationed their own breathing on the most demanding flight ever attempted.
Ice. Cloud and icing built up on the wings, propeller, and control surfaces, adding weight and ruining the airflow over the wing. Efficient, thin wings are especially vulnerable to ice, and the aircraft turned heavy and sluggish.

The men took turns at the controls, one flying while the other two tried to thaw out and grab broken sleep in a space about the size of a phone booth.

How Did They Navigate Over the North Pole?

Near the Pole, a magnetic compass becomes useless — it spins freely because the magnetic field lines converge there. Belyakov could not rely on the instrument most pilots take for granted.

Instead, he navigated using the sun’s position through a sun compass, combined with dead reckoning: tracking time, speed, and heading to calculate position. The margin for error was tiny. A drift of just a few degrees near the Pole could put the aircraft over open ocean, a thousand miles from land, with no fuel to spare.

They crossed the geographic North Pole in the small hours of the flight. There was nothing to see — no marker, no painted line, just endless white in a strange flat light, a compass needle pointing nowhere, and an engine that kept turning.

How Did the Flight End?

The crew came down the far side of the world into Canada, then into the weather and mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Headwinds began burning fuel faster than the flight plan allowed.

A record-distance aircraft is planned to the last drop, because spare fuel is weight and weight costs range. When the headwinds hit, the crew began calculating how far they could realistically reach. They had hoped to press deep into California, perhaps the San Francisco area, but the fuel math said no.

So they descended over the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon, and landed across the river at Pearson Field, an Army airfield in Vancouver, Washington, on the morning of June 20, 1937 — after 63-plus hours in the air and more than 5,500 miles over the top of the planet.

In a remarkable footnote, the base commander at Pearson was General George Marshall, who had no idea three Russians were about to land in his backyard. Crews scrambled to find anyone who spoke Russian. The townspeople of Vancouver woke to discover the most famous airplane in the world had landed overnight, with three frozen, filthy, grinning men climbing out — men who had eaten breakfast in Moscow two days earlier.

The crew became instant heroes. They received a ticker-tape welcome and met President Franklin Roosevelt at the White House.

What Happened to Chkalov Afterward?

The story doesn’t end softly. Valery Chkalov died in December 1938, less than 18 months after the transpolar flight, while testing a new fighter. When the engine quit, he tried to steer the failing aircraft away from houses below toward open ground and didn’t make it. He was 34 years old.

His legacy endured. A town near Moscow, Chkalovsky, still bears his name. And at Pearson Field in Vancouver, Washington, a monument funded by both Russians and Americans honors the three men and their long-winged aircraft — sitting quietly on a field most people drive past without a second look.

These three climbed into a single-engine aircraft with no GPS, no satellite weather, and a compass that failed when they needed it most, and pointed it at the one place on Earth no one had ever crossed. Modern aviation — glass cockpits, envelope protection, and dependable engines — was built on the backs of people who went first when going first could kill them.

Key Takeaways

On June 18, 1937, Valery Chkalov, Georgy Baidukov, and Alexander Belyakov took off from Moscow in the ANT-25 for the first transpolar flight to North America.
The single-engine ANT-25, designed by Andrei Tupolev with a 113-foot wingspan, was built almost entirely around fuel capacity for maximum range.
The crew flew over the geographic North Pole, navigating by sun compass and dead reckoning because magnetic compasses fail near the Pole.
They landed at Pearson Field, Vancouver, Washington, on June 20, 1937, after more than 63 hours and 5,500 miles, then met President Roosevelt.
Chkalov died testing a fighter in December 1938 at age 34; monuments at Pearson Field and the town of Chkalovsky preserve the crew’s legacy.