The Spy Who Changed History by Svetlana Lokhova

Author:Svetlana Lokhova [Svetlana Lokhova]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

10

GLORY TO STALIN’S FALCONS

On 14 July 1937, a Soviet long-range experimental aircraft, the Tupolev ANT-25 RD – bearing the initials of its lead designer, Andrey Nikolaevich Tupolev – landed at San Jacinto, California after a record-breaking non-stop flight. The plane, which had taken off from a specially extended runway at Shchelkovo air base in Moscow sixty-two hours and seventeen minutes previously, came down in a cow field outside San Diego. None of the three exhausted airmen on board either spoke or understood a single word of English. They carried three cards, to show people on arrival, bearing the words ‘bath’, ‘eat’ and ‘sleep’.1

On arrival in the United States, the two pilots, Mikhail Gromov and Andrey Yumashev, and navigator Sergey Danilin, met the waiting and smiling Stan Shumovsky, who had arranged for them to receive a heroes’ welcome across America. His friend Tupolev’s aircraft had got the crew to America; Stan’s plan was to get them to the Oval Office and to the attention of the world.

Close to the site of the landing in California today is a commemorative plaque. It reads:

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