cheliuskin

The Cheliuskin was a Soviet steamship ice-bound in Arctic waters during navigation along the Northern Maritime Route from Murmansk to Vladivostok. It was built in Denmark in 1933 and named after the 18th century Russian polar explorer Semion Ivanovich Cheliuskin. The head of the expedition was Otto Yuliyevich Shmidt and the ship's captain - V.I.Voronin. There were 111 people on board the steamship. The crew members were known as cheliuskintsy. The steamship had been drifting with the ice-fields before sinking on February 13 1934, crushed by the icepacks. The crew managed to escape onto the ice and built a makeshift airstrip using a tractor. They were rescued in April of the same year and flown to the town of Uelen. The aircraft pilots who took part in search and rescue operations were among the first people to receive the newly established highest title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Those pilots were Anatoly Liapidevsky, Sigizmund Levanevsky, Vasili Molokov, Mavrikiy Slepnev, Mikhail Vodopianov, Nikolai Kamanin and Ivan Doronin.

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