Valery Pavlovich Chkalov

Valery Pavlovich Chkalov (February 2, 1904 - December 15, 1938) was a Russian aircraft test pilot and a Hero of the Soviet Union (1936).

Chkalov was born in the town of Vasilyevo, near Nizhni Novgorod, the son of a boiler maker. His mother died when he was six years old. Chkalov studied in the technical school in Cherepovets but later returned to work as an apprentice with his father and as a stoker on river boats. He saw his first plane in 1919 and decided to join the Red Army's air force. He trained as a pilot and graduated in 1924 joining a fighter squadron. Chkalov married Olga Orekova in 1927. In the early 1930s he became a test pilot.

Chkalov lived a short but impressive life. Chkalov developed several new figures of aerobatics. In 1936 and 1937 he participated in several ultra-long flights including a 63-hour flight from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington, United States via the North Pole on an Tupolev ANT-25 plane (June 18-20, 1937), a non-stop distance of 8,811 kilometres. The flight pioneered the polar air route from Europe to the American Pacific Coast.

He was killed on December 15, 1938 while piloting a prototype of the Polikarpov I-180 fighter which crashed during a test flight. The series of events leading up to the crash is not entirely clear. Neither Polikarpov nor Tomashevich approved the flight, and no one had signed a form releasing the prototype from the factory. In any event, Chkalov took off and made a low altitude circuit around the airfield. For the second circuit Chkalov flew farther away climbing to over 2000 meven though the flight plan specifically forbade exceeding 600 m. Chkalov apparently miscalculated his landing approach and came in short of the airfield, but when he attempted to correct his approach, the engine cut out. Chkalov was able to avoid several buildings, but struck an overhead powerline. Chkalov was ejected from the cockpit sustaining severe injuries and died two hours later.

The official government investigation concluded that the engine cut out because it became too cold in the absence of the cowl flaps. Others hypothesized that Chkalov had advanced the throttle too fast and thus flooded the engine. As a result of the crash officials including Arms Industry Department director S. Belyakin who urged the first flight were immediately arrested. Years later, fellow test pilot Mikhail Gromov blamed the designers for flawed engine cooling and Chkalov himself for deviating from the flight plan. Chkalov’s son claimed that a plan to assassinate his father had been in the works in the months preceding his death. Some experts write that Chkalov was a brilliant instinctual flier preferring to rely on hunches and reflex rather than standard methodology or flying instruments. He was also a daredevil who disdained authority. But for many he still remains one the Soviet Union’s most famous pilots.