The famous ANT-25 plane which made the first ever non-stop flight from Moscow to America's Vancouver by chief pilot Valery Chkalov in the 1930s is to get a new lease of alife at an aircraft repair plant in Nizhny Novgorod, the plant’s press service said on Tuesday.
Chkalov flew the ANT-25 plane, made at the Sokol plant, from Moscow to Vancouver (Washington, U.S.) via the North Pole in June 1937. The 9,130 km flight lasted 63 hours and 16 minutes, setting a record at the time. U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt met the crew when they landed.
“Experts at the Sokol plant are repairing the unique item on display at the Chkalov Museum, the ANT-25, which flew the Moscow-North Pole-Vancouver route,” the Sokol plant said.
The plant will restore the lacquer cover on the plane and repaint it by early June.
Last year, Sokol renovated vintage Polikarpov I-16 and Po-2 warplanes in the same Chkalov museum.
“In the 1930s, Valery Chkalov was the senior pilot at the plant who tested I-16 fighters the plant produced,” Sokol Director General Alexander Karezin said.
Nizhny Novgorod will celebrate the 75th anniversary of Chkalov's mission on June 23 and will organize a series of aviation-related events, a souvenir fair and a feature film devoted to the legendary flight.
Born in 1904 in Vasilevo (near Nizhny Novgorod), Chkalov joined the Red Army in 1919 and undertook pilot training 1921-24 in various flying schools across the country. He was known as a troublesome, risk-taking pilot and was sentenced to a year in jail for a brawl in 1925 and then to another year for violating flight safety regulations in 1928.
Chkalov was the holder of numerous high-ranking state awards, including the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of the Red Banner.
He died in 1938 at the age of 34 during a test flight of the I-180 fighter. Development of the aircraft was incomplete and it had numerous defects,but the test program was rushed on Stalin’s orders.
