A few days ago I received a message from a reader (Jim Davis) who wanted to know if I might be able to provide information regarding a short newsreel that he had come across:

I have a short film clip … silent … black and white … it shows a large single-engined monoplane and biplane and crews with locals at Urga, Mongolia and “Pekin” China.

While it wasn’t much to go on, I knew right away what the subject was. It’s some rare footage documenting the USSR’s first major international aerial expedition: a 4,000-mile journey between Moscow and Peking that Soviet propagandists dubbed “The Great Flight.”

“The Great Flight” (Великий перелет) was flown by a squadron of six airplanes: two German Junkers F-13s, an AK-1, a Polikarpov R-2, and two Polikarpov R-1s. According to the officials who organized the flight what made these airplanes unique was the fact that each had been manufactured “either in whole or in part by Soviet factories.”

By contemporary Soviet standards the Great Flight was an immensely ambitious undertaking. Only two years removed from the founding of the Soviet aviation program in 1923, the Great Flight was intended to demonstrate how “Bolshevik audacity and the persistence of Soviet workers” had enabled the USSR to overcome the “principal difficulties that lay in the way of conquering the aerial elements.”

The six airplanes left Moscow on 10 June 1925. They were accompanied by military spokesmen and journalists from major newspapers as well as a representative from the State Telegraph Agency (Rosta). The journalists went along to monitor the progress of the Great Flight and to compose the feature stories that appeared daily in the country’s press. Two cameramen also flew aboard the aircraft in order to provide a visual record of the expedition. At each designated landing site, these representatives organized rallies, delivered speeches, orchestrated tours of the airplanes, and disseminated the large amount of propaganda material carried aboard the aircraft.

The flight came to an end on 13 July 1925 when four of the original six planes landed in Peking.

The Great Flight was, in fact, much more than an “expedition” organized to test the abilities of Soviet air crews and airplanes. It was the USSR’s first “prestige flight” — the precursor and model for the European tours of the late 1920s and the far more famous trans-polar flights of the 1930s.

Jim graciously agreed to upload the clip to his YouTube channel (where you can find a large collection of other aviation videos, too).

Here it is:

The first part of the clip shows the 4 July 1925 arrival of Soviet airplanes in Ulan Bator, Mongolia [AKA "Urga"]. The monoplanes that you see are the Junkers F-13s. The biplane is an R-1. In the last portion we see footage of the reception the fliers received following their landing in Peking. Incidentally, the Junkers F-13 appearing at the beginning of the clip didn’t make it to the finish line. It crashed five days after arriving in Ulan Bator.

I discuss the Great Flight in more detail in Chapter 6 of Dictatorship of the Air.

ScP