The morning of June 20, 1937, the roar of an airplane engine woke 12-year-old Don Carpenter, who could recall the sound of every airplane he’d ever heard. This one, he hadn’t. Popping from between his sheets, he saw a red-winged plane banking, so he pulled on his clothes, grabbed his bicycle, and peddled for Pearson Field. Meanwhile, the flight jerked the Vancouver Barracks commander, Brig. Gen. George Marshall, away from his Sunday breakfast.
The red and gray ANT-25 bomber had traveled just over 5,200 miles to the landing field in slightly over 63 hours and via a route thought impossible — across the North Pole. It was headed to Oakland, Calif., not Vancouver.
From the cockpit, men emerged wrapped in fur-laden cold-weather attire. The Soviet three-man crew — Valery Chkalov, the 33-year-old pilot; Georgi Baidukov, 30, co-pilot; and Alexander Belyakov, 40, the navigator — were just getting their feet on the ground when Marshall’s Packard came ripping down the airship to greet them. Soviet and U.S. relations were just four years old, and Marshall’s care of the Russian airmen was likely his first step into international diplomacy, for which he’d win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
The Soviet aircraft flew smoothly until the pole crossing. Then came a cloud bank 2,000 feet above the plane’s flight ceiling. Magnetic storms disoriented the compass. The crew fought Arctic cyclones and freezing weather. Ice thickened to 5 inches on the front edges of the plane’s wings. The plane flew so high that the crew members’ noses bled. They fought fuel-consuming headwinds, and nearly used up their oxygen supply. All onboard knew a crash in the desolate Arctic meant no rescue.
