Exactly 80 years ago - on November 2, 1938, for the first time in history, three women: Valentina Grizodubova, Polina Osipenko and Marina Raskova were nominated for the honorary title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The famous Soviet female pilots were nominated for the highest government awards for the first female non-stop flight on the Moscow-Far East route.
The flight on the plane ANT-37 "Rodina" took place on September 24-25, 1938. The crew of the aircraft consisted of commander V. S. Grizodubova, co-pilot - PD Osipenko and navigator - M. M. Raskova. They made a non-stop flight on the route Moscow - Far East (Kerbi village, Komsomolsk-on-Amur region) with a length of 6450 km (in a straight line - 5910 km). During the flight, which lasted 26 hours and 29 minutes, a female world aviation record for flight range was set.
This non-stop flight was the second successful attempt to cover the distance to the Far East in about a day. Earlier on June 27-28, the crew consisting of pilot Vladimir Kokkinaki and navigator Alexander Bryadinsky set a speed record by overcoming 7580 km (6850 km in a straight line) from Moscow to Sapsk-Dalniy in Primorye on the TsKB-30 "Moskva" aircraft, their flight lasted 24 hours 36 minutes. The second such flight, which was performed by the crew of Grizodubova, demonstrated to everyone that aviation was able to complete the flight in about a day, which previously took five days.
The crew of the Rodina aircraft before the flight to the Far East. 2nd pilot Captain Polina Osipenko, crew commander Deputy of the USSR Armed Forces Valentina Grizodubova, navigator Marina Raskova, photo: russiainphoto.ru
The legs of the ANT-37 Rodina aircraft, on which the Soviet pilots made their famous flight, grew out of a purely military project - a long-range bomber DB-2, on which the Tupolev Design Bureau was working, the chief designer of the aircraft was P. O. Sukhoi. "Rodina" became a rework of one of the unfinished bomber, built at the factory # 18. Back in February 1936, work on the DB-2 bomber and its tests stopped. But they decided to convert one of the unfinished copies into a record aircraft, since the original sample had a good flight range.
On the instructions of the Soviet government at the plant number 156 in Moscow, the unfinished plane was converted into a car capable of covering 7000-8000 kilometers. The resulting record-breaking aircraft received the designation ANT-37bis (DB-2B) or Rodina. The aircraft was equipped with more powerful aircraft engines M-86, producing 950 hp. near the ground and 800 hp at an altitude of 4200 meters with three-blade variable pitch propellers. All weapons were removed from the aircraft, and the volume of fuel tanks was increased, the nose of the fuselage was also altered, the view from the navigator's cockpit was improved, and new instrumentation and radio equipment appeared.
Plane ANT-37bis "Rodina"
The plane received its own name in August 1938. The word "Homeland" was written in large letters in red paint on the wing surface between the two red stars. The plane itself was completely silver-colored. Also, the word "Motherland" was written in calligraphic stitching on the left side of the nose of the aircraft fuselage.
The fact that Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova, a 19-year-old student from Kharkov, would enter the flying club, and then the flight school and become a civil aviation pilot was quite predictable. This is because she was the daughter of one of the first Russian pilots and aircraft designers Stepan Grizodubov, therefore, the future famous pilot lived in an atmosphere of flights and love for the sky from birth. But the head of a collective farm poultry farm from near Berdyansk, Polina Denisovna Govyaz (after Osipenko's second marriage), had a desire to conquer the sky, most likely, thanks to her marriage with military pilot Stepan Govyaz. She learned to pilot an easy-to-fly U-2 biplane while still a 23-year-old waitress in a flight canteen, and only after a while, in 1932, she was admitted to a military pilot school. But the 20-year-old laboratory assistant of the Air Force Academy, Muscovite Marina Mikhailovna Raskova, was initially fascinated by desk air navigation. However, this interest soon grew into something more and in 1933 the correspondence student passed the exam for the navigator of the plane, and in 1935 she learned the skill of piloting.
Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova
Needless to say, the whole trinity dreamed of air records that the entire Soviet Union lived with in those years. Sooner or later, their paths in life had to cross. In May 1937, Osipenko set three world records of flight altitude in the class of seaplanes on the MP-1 flying boat. In October 1937, Grizodubova set four world speed and altitude records in the class of light land aircraft on the UT-2 training aircraft and UT-1 training aircraft. And on October 24, together with navigator Raskova, on a light aircraft Ya-12 (AIR-12), she flew Moscow - Aktyubinsk, breaking the record for the distance in a straight line. Finally, on May 24, 1938, the crew of the MP-1 seaplane consisting of the first pilot Polina Osipenko, the second pilot Vera Lomako and the navigator Marina Raskova broke the women's world record for the distance along the closed route, and on July 2 of the same year, during the flight Sevastopol - Arkhangelsk, straight and broken line. Grizodubova decides to answer this with a new record. She is asking for permission to fly on the Moscow - Khabarovsk route in order to break the absolute female world record for flight range. She calls captain Polina Osipenko as co-pilot, and senior lieutenant Marina Raskova as navigator.
Polina Dnisovna Osipenko
The non-stop flight from Moscow to the Far East was preceded by training on analogs of the ANT-37 aircraft. They prepared thoroughly, the pilots trained even at night in order to get used to controlling the aircraft in all conditions and to work together before a long record flight.
ANT-37 "Rodina" took off from the Shchelkovo airfield on September 24, 1938 at 8:12 am local time and headed for Khabarovsk. On the same day, the weather on the route deteriorated sharply, after 50 kilometers of flight, clouds covered the ground. The crew covered almost all the remaining 6400 kilometers out of sight of the ground, the flight was carried out by instruments, the bearing was used to radio beacons, which made it possible to determine their location. If initially the plane flew over the clouds, then before Krasnoyarsk the crew was forced to enter them, the pilots faced cloud cover, the upper limit of which exceeded 7000 meters.
Marina Mikhailovna Raskova
Outside the plane it was -7 degrees Celsius, the ANT-37, enveloped in moisture, began to freeze, the windshields of the cockpit of the first pilot and navigator bound ice, and the side windows also faded. I had to climb to break through the clouds, which disappeared only at an altitude of 7450 meters. And up to the Sea of Okhotsk, "Rodina" flew at least 7000 meters. The crew at that time worked in oxygen masks. Naturally, the fuel consumption also increased, this was facilitated by a long climb and the operation of engines in a very intense mode.
In difficult weather conditions, the crew flew both Khabarovsk, which was originally the final point of the route, and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The clouds dispersed only over the Sea of Okhotsk, where the crew managed to orient themselves and turned the plane 180 degrees towards the coast.
The situation was complicated by the fact that the radio equipment on board failed. The crew wanted to land the plane in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, but from the air they confused the Amur with the Amgun River flowing into it, as a result, the plane moved along the tributary. In the area of the Amur-Amgun interfluve, fuel remained for half an hour of flight, and Grizodubova decided to land the plane on its belly without releasing the landing gear directly into the swamp, since there were no suitable flat landing sites in this area. Before that, she ordered Marina Raskova to jump out with a parachute, since she was in the glazed navigator's cabin in the nose of the aircraft, which could be seriously injured during landing. She had to jump with two bars of chocolate in her pocket, she was found in the taiga only 10 days later.
On September 25, having made a successful landing in a swamp in the taiga, the crew completed the flight, which lasted 26 hours and 29 minutes. The women's world record for the longest non-stop flight was set. Nobody knew the exact landing site of the Motherland. Their route was roughly built according to the last direction finding of Raskova, taken by the Chita radio station. A large force was mobilized to search for the pilots, which included more than 50 aircraft, hundreds of foot detachments, pathfinders on deer and horses, fishermen on boats and boats. As a result, the plane was discovered from the air on October 3, 1938, the crew of the R-5 reconnaissance biplane led by commander M. Sakharov found it. On October 6, at about 11 am, a detachment of rescuers and pilots, leaving the plane in a swamp before the onset of frost, proceeded along the Amgun River through the village of Kerb to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, and then to Khabarovsk, from where they arrived in Moscow by train.
They went to the capital on a special train, at every station, in every city on the way to Moscow, they were greeted with congratulations from a crowd of Soviet citizens. In the capital, the pilots were greeted by tens of thousands of people who stood along the streets on their way. On November 2, 1938, for the courage and heroism shown in flight, Grizodubova, Osipenko and Raskova were awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Meeting the crew of the plane "Rodina" at the Belorussky railway station, photo: russiainphoto.ru
Their "Motherland" was taken out of the swamp only in winter, when it froze over. The plane was put on a chassis and transferred to Moscow. Nobody knew what to do with the plane. But at the end of June 1941, after the start of the war, it was repainted according to Air Force standards, replacing the silver paint with camouflage and applying red stars on the fuselage and rudder. At the same time, the plane stood idle for about three years at the Central Airport, not far from the Aeroport metro station. Only on July 17, 1942, the aircraft was assigned the USSR registration number I-443 and transferred to the aircraft plant number 30 located not far from the Dynamo metro station, after which it began to fly. However, on September 16, 1943, the aircraft was finally decommissioned due to wear and tear.
By this time, of the three members of his illustrious crew, only Valentina Grizodubova survived the war and lived a long life, having died on April 28, 1993 at the age of 83, and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. But her two comrades were much less fortunate. The second pilot in the famous flight - Polina Osipenko, died on May 11, 1939 at the age of 31. She was the victim of a plane crash. On this day, Osipenko was at a training camp, where, together with the head of the main flight inspection of the Red Army Air Force A. K. Serov, she practiced "blind" flights. The ashes of Osipenko and Serov were placed in urns in the Kremlin wall on Red Square. The navigator of the famous crew Marina Raskova also died in a plane crash, but already during the Great Patriotic War. On January 4, 1943, being by that time the commander of the 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment, she ferried her Pe-2 to the front at Stalingrad. Her plane crashed in bad weather near the village of Mikhailovka in the Saratov region, the entire crew was killed. Like Osipenko, she was cremated, her ashes in an urn were placed in the Kremlin wall on Red Square.
