COVER N. 227 - RUSSIA

Postmark: ПОЧТА РОССИИ - ???? 16.03.23  

Posted on the 16th March; Received on the 28th March 2023

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Julia, once again, did her best to find an envelope that would somehow fit my philatelic interests. Thank you so much, Julia. Greatly appreciated, a usual.

Valery Chkalov, pilot, Georgi Baidukov, co-pilot and  Alexander Belyakov, navigator. 

The history of golden age aviation is full of daring exploits  that would elevate those who bravely pursued them to herodom (sometimes in absentia, though, when things went not according to plan....) and which would pave the way to what is now so common  that one tends to forget that not that long ago, it took much more that a check-in over the internet and a hop to the airport to board a plane to uneventfully fly between two continents.

I will not go over the history of the first transpolar flight, which started on  June 17, 1937 on the runway of Shchelkovo airport, in Moscow and would  come to an halt  63 hours and 16 minutes later, on the 20th,  in the tarmac of Pearson Field, Vancouver, and which was carried out by the three heroic aviators whose photograph can be seen on the lower left corned of the cover Julia sent me, since a good summing up of all the proceedings can be found  here. This notwithstanding, the simple knowledge that  less than 10 gallons of fuel remained on the tanks of their single-engine, long winged  Tupolev ANT-25 upon landing, is enough to muster a deep respect and admiration for the three members of the crew that embarked on such an epic and perilous undertaking.... just imagine if the M-34R engine failed along the route...

Ironically, nowadays, the aggression war that Russia, wherefrom the three aviators originated, is waging against one of its neighbours, dictated that  transcontinental flights over the  north polar route be suspended,  but again, I don't even think that when such flights were commonplace, any passenger boarding one of the multi-engine aircraft certified to do it, would even contemplate the possibility of a forced landing on the ice below...., let alone think of using his/her urine as coolant.....

Stamps:

The pre-stamped envelope Julia used was issued in 2022, judging from the date on the printed stamp which, I presume, highlights the 40th anniversary of the death of the navigator  on the epic flight, Alexander Belyakov (1897 - 1982), who would rise to the rank of Lieutenant general of the Soviet Air Forces and become a  member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. 

- 8 Ruble stamp, issued on 07DEC2007 as part of a se-tenant two stamp set which also included a vignette, themed on Arctic deep water  Exploration. Julia had already used the companion stamp on another of her sendings to me, and the vignette can also be seen on the postcard she sent me inside the cover, as usual.

The legend on the stamp reads something like Deep Sea Manned Vehicle - MIR-1.

- 30 Ruble stamp, part of a set of three stamps with the same denomination, included in a souvenir sheet, issued on 06SEP2020, dedicated to  Russian Space Science Achievements.

The image on the stamp is that of the Lunokhod-1 Lunar Research Craft, the first wheeled vehicle ever to operate on the surface of a celestial body other than Earth, which landed on the surface of the moon attached to the Luna 17 spacecraft on November 17, 1970.