page_title: Sigizmund Levanevsky
section_title: North Pole flights
hierarchical_section_title: Sigizmund Levanevsky / North Pole flights
caption_attribution_description: English: Postage stamp of USSR, 1935: Aviator Sigizmund Levanevsky. With overprint (overprint on this copy of stamp contains misspelling "Сан-франциско" with lowercase "ф") Русский: Почтовая марка СССР, 1935 год: Лётчик Сигизмунд Леваневский. С надпечаткой (надпечатка на данном экземпляре марки упоминает "Сан-франциско" со строчной "ф")
context_page_description: Sigizmund Aleksandrovich Levanevsky was a Soviet pioneer of long-range flight who was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union in 1934 for his role in the SS Chelyuskin rescue.
context_section_description: On 3 August 1935 Levanevsky and a two-man crew (co-pilot Georgy Baidukov and navigator Victor Levchenko) attempted a transpolar flight from Moscow to San Francisco in a prototype single engine Tupolev ANT-25 long-range bomber. A thousand miles into the flight (just north of the Kola Peninsula) the oil tank developed an oil-leak, being overfilled, and Levanevsky chose to scuttle the mission. The following year Levanevsky and navigator Levchenko sought to prove the possibility of an air route between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. via the Alaskan-Bering Strait, and completed an 11,800+ mile multistage flight from Los Angeles (5 August 1936) to Moscow (13 September 1936) in a Vultee V-1A floatplane. For this flight Levanevsky was awarded with Order of Red Banner of Labour.
  On 12 August 1937 a type Bolkhovitinov DB-A (no. N-209, a Dalniy Bombardirovshik-Academy, i.e. Long-range Bomber) aircraft with 6-men crew under captaincy of Levanevsky started its long distance flight from Moscow to the United States (to Fairbanks) via the North Pole. The radio communications with the crew broke off the next day, on the 13th of August, at 17:58 Moscow time after the North Pole, when the aircraft encountered adverse weather conditions and suffered failure of its end right engine.  The Soviet Government financed two aerial searches for the missing aircraft using purchased US aircraft under the command of Canadian bush and Antarctic pilot Herbert Hollick-Kenyon in 1937 and 1938.  Jimmie Mattern flew a Lockheed 12, "The Texan" from California to assist in the search for his former rescuer in the initial search. After the unsuccessful search attempts all the members of the crew were presumed dead.
  In March 1999, Dennis Thurston of the Minerals Management Service in Anchorage located what appeared to be wreckage in the shallows of Camden Bay, between Prudhoe Bay and Kaktovik. There was conjecture in the media that it was Levanevsky's aircraft, but a subsequent attempt to locate the object again proved unsuccessful.
caption: Postage stamp, USSR, 1935: Sigizmund Levanevsky stamp with commemorative red overprint for "Moscow - San Francisco flight via the North Pole", August 1935.
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