Northwest History. Alaska. Aviation Crashes & Wreckage Missing Planes.

• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1937
• Subjects: Russian plane; Fairbanks; fears; Sigismund Levaneffsky; Soviet Lindbergh; Moscow; the United States; Oakland; radio communication; flyers; Point Schmidt; Northern Siberia; Seattle; Russian trans-polar plane; San Jacinto; Calif.; Alaska; marshals; airport; Point Barrow; fog; Northwest; Pacific > History > 20th century; Pacific; Barrow; Siberia
• Online Access: http://content.libraries.wsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/clipping/id/90073

No Word From Russian Plane For 12 Hours: Crowd Waits At Fairbanks With Dense Fog, No Ceiling Reported Over Icy Wastes. NO WORD FROM RUSSIAN PLANE FOR 12 HOURS. Crowd Waits at Fairbanks With Dense Fog, No Ceiling Reported Over Icy Wastes. Grave fears were entertained last night for the safety of Sigismund Levaneffsky, "Soviet Lindbergh," and his five companion Russian airmen who were flying across the top of the world in a plane to establish a regular aerial passenger service between Moscow and the United States. The giant four-motored plane was long overdue in Fairbanks, where it was scheduled to stop for refueling before proceeding on to Oakland. And nearly twelve hours had elapsed since there had been any radio communication with the flyers. SILENT ALL DAY Associated Press dispatches from Fairbanks said that the last radio contact had been yesterday at 7 a. m. (Seattle time) when a station at Point Schmidt, in Northern Siberia, heard the plane transmit its call letters. There was no message, according to the dispatches-just the call letters. And since then, nothing but the increasingly ominous silence. A. Vartanian, Russian flight representative in Seattle, declared he was not alarmed over the plane's long silence, however. It was recalled that there were similar breaks in communication with the second Russian, trans-polar plane, which finally landed safely at San Jacinto, Calif. EXPECTED AT NOON. It had originally been estimated the plane would arrive at Fairbanks at about noon, allowing thirty hours for the flight from Moscow. Even after taking into consideration the sixty-mile-an-hour headwinds which the plane encountered north of Alaksa, it was believed it should land not later than 4 p.m. On that assumption, most of the population of Fairbanks assembled at the airport as the hour drew near, and it was necessary for special police and deputy United States marshals to rope off space around the refueling depot. FOG AT BARROW Weather reports from Point Barrow were anything but encouraging for the flyers. There was a dense fog, with no ceiling and no visibility. The temperature at 11 a.m. was given as 36 degrees above zero, but that was on the surface, miles below the sub-stratosphere in which the plane was being navigated when it last revealed its position.