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

It turns out that the Nationalist leader (and at least one of his subordinates) was “obsessed” with airplanes and viewed the development of Chinese aviation as a means for transforming his countrymen and unifying the nation. Baumler speculates that Chiang’s air-minded interests mirrored the widespread European fascination with flight in the inter-War period, particularly in 1930s Nazi Germany.

Perhaps. It seems to me though that it isn’t necessary to travel that far West in search of precedents to Chiang’s aerial obsession. In fact, it may be possible to identify the origins of Chiang’s fascination with flight without even leaving China.

On 13 July 1925 four Soviet airplanes landed in the Chinese capital. They were the remnants of a larger squadron that had departed Moscow six weeks earlier with the goal of demonstrating the USSR’s “sympathy and friendship for the Chinese people” by flying to Peking. Known as the “Great Flight” (Великий перелет), the mission was history’s first premeditated attempt to promote international goodwill through the use of aviation. [I discuss the details of the Great Flight in Chapter Six of DotA.]

While I have no way of measuring Chinese responses to the Soviet propaganda mission, given the high-level diplomatic negotiations that took place in advance, the audacious scope of the enterprise, and the widespread media coverage devoted to the event (journalists, cameramen, and a film crew flew along to document everything for the Bolshevik state), it seems reasonable to conclude that the Great Flight would have attracted the attention of interested officials and military leaders like Chiang. Perhaps it even inspired his original interest in aviation?

The “Russian connection” seems all the more plausible given the marked similarity of Chiang’s ideas to those advanced by Bolshevik Party propagandists during their 1923 Campaign to Build the Red Air Fleet. [Chiang's reported ideas bear an uncanny similarity to those first expressed in Leon Trotsky's pamphlet Aviation: Instrument of the Future (1923).] Likewise, while the Nationalists’ efforts to raise money through public donations can be traced to the national subscription campaigns popular in Western Europe and Imperial Russia prior to 1914, the practice of allowing enterprises and organizations to sponsor airplanes by donating the funds for their construction was first adopted by ODVF and Dobrolet. Not coincidentally (perhaps), several of these “factory-built” Soviet aircraft participated in the Great Flight.

Although the USSR more frequently followed than led when it came to the development of breakthrough aviation technologies, the country was often at the forefront in devising innovative ways of popularizing that technology. Ironically, it may well be that Russian Communists inspired the air-minded notions of China’s ill-fated Nationalist leader.

Whatever the case, I’d love to learn about the Chinese reaction to the arrival of the Great Flight squadron. The event would serve as a terrific vehicle for undertaking an article or essay on the origins of Chinese airmindedness.

Someone should get to work on this. Professor Baumler?

ScP

From the very beginning of their Campaign to Build the Red Air Fleet in the spring of 1923, Bolshevik Party officials oversaw the creation of propagandistic media aimed at inspiring citizens to join the voluntary society “Friends of the Air Fleet” (ODVF) and to contribute money toward the construction of airplanes. Posters, of course, played an important part of the state’s campaign but so, too, did written works including short stories, rhymes, and poems.

Most of the literary texts created to support ODVF have long since been forgotten, even by Russians. Very few (if any!) have been published in English translation. Nevertheless, these items are important for what they reveal about Soviet leaders’ intent and visions regarding the USSR’s emerging aviation culture.

The poem “Aero-verses” is a characteristic example. It was first published in 1925 by the short-lived journal Give Us Motors. High art it ain’t. But it reflects well two of the principal themes associated with ODVF’s initial campaign: that citizens should replace their faith in God with faith in technology, and that citizens’ should recognize as their duty participation in building aviation.

Here’s the English translation, followed by the Russian original:

“Aero-verses” (1925)

We no longer consider ourselves worthless dust.
Who taught us the narcotic of faith?
Skyward we launch the aero-squadron.
Our religion is the airplane.

Hey, wake up you blind and deaf ones,
Attend to the path of life,
We wrest power from the hands of nature
In establishing the air fleet.

Look upward, friend of the air fleet,
Let pride constrain your thoughts
That aerial flock is, after all your work.
The propellers were fastened by your dues.

Higher, comrade, lift your head.
Eyes wider with an intense glance,
See how they splendidly fly,
The steel children of the laboring mass.

Listen, the propeller whirling,
The aero ever higher climbs.
Adroitly moving through the sky,
Friends, it is our airplane.

*****

“Аэро-стихи”

[Даешь мотор, но. 5 (1925), ст. 30]

Довольно считать себя никчемною пылью.
Чему научил нас религии дурман?
В небо запустим аэро-эскадрилью.
Наша религия–аэроплан.

Эй, проснитесь, слепцы, глухие,
Слушайте жизни ход,
Вырвем власть из рук стихи,
Создавая воздушный флот.

Вверх гляди, друг воздухо-флота,
Гордостью мысли свои стреножь,
В стае воздушной твоя, ведь, работа,
Винтиком ввернут твой членский грош.

Выше, товарищ голову.
Шире зрачки напряженных глаз,
Видишь, как летят здорово,
Дети стальные трудящихся масс.

Слышишь, пропеллeр дыжится,
Аэро выше гляди берет.
Ловко по воздуху движется,
Наш, друзья, самолет.

*****

ScP

As the clip’s voice-over notes (albeit in French now in Russian — sorry!), Andrei Tupolev was selected to head the construction project which brought together more than 800 technicians representing dozens of aviation workshops and bureaus from across the USSR. Work on the plane progressed from late 1933 through the spring of 1934. When completed, the Maxim Gorky measured 112-ft long and possessed a wingspan of just over 206 ft. [11 ft greater than the earliest Boeing 747s] In its initial configuration, the ANT-20 was equipped with eight engines, three on each wing with two mounted in tandem above. (Later, the tandem engines were removed when found to be unnecessary).

Like the airplane from which its design was derived, the Soviet TB-4, the ANT-20 was ostensibly to function as a heavy bomber. The plane did set a number of world records for lift capacity, but its was ponderously slow. Its maximum speed of 138 mph would have made it easy prey for contemporary fighter aircraft. In reality, the Maxim Gorky prototype was intended to be a propaganda platform. It was routinely dispatched to the Soviet hinterlands to generate support for the Communist Party’s policies. To fulfill this task, the Maxim was equipped with a powerful radio transmitter (known as the “Voice of the Sky”), a printing press, a photographic laboratory, and a projector to screen films for isolated rural audiences. Rows of lights located underneath the wings enabled the crew to display electronic text messages to spectators on the ground.

Less than a year after its triumphal debut, the Maxim Gorky was destroyed in a mid-air collision with an escort plane during a public flyover at the Moscow aerodrome.

If you’d like to know still more about the Maxim Gorky, check out this excerpt from Dictatorship of the Air where you can read about the origins and construction of the aircraft and the problems that plagued the propaganda squadron to which it was attached.

Happy New Year!

ScP