OVER THE NORTH POLE

Radio Record, 22 July 1938, Page 29

OVER THE NORTH POLE

Soviet Flier’s Memorable Account Of Non-Stop Flight From Moscow

ECORD-BREAKING aviators are a singularly literary lot. But, for all the reams written by, for and about them, I had not come across a really balanced, detailed, well-coloured account of what happens on a long-distance flight until I read George Baidukov’s "Over the North Pole." However voluminous the literature of aviation, this "Over the North Pole" -a brief, concise, simple account of Soviet airmen’s conquest of the Arctic -must rank as one of the most interesting human documents of its kind yet published. Book "Got" Me To be frank, I find it a trifle difficult to marshal arguments behind so enthusiastic a statement. Looking back on the absorbed two or three hours IJ spent with the book, I can only say that "Over the North Pole" "got" me eompletely. For those with strong political "rightist" convictions there may be much in Baidukovy’s story that will be irritating and distracting. The air-man-author betrays all too clearly and naively the fact that he is a propagandist, and that propaganda capital was to be made out of the amazing flight from Moscow to Portland. But that is not the point, The point is that Baidukov relates with qa happy lack of imagination, but a remarkable and sensitive faculty of observation, exactly what happened from the time ANT-25 took off from Moscow until it panded in the United States sixty hours ater, HE man tells his story with the simple directness of a child. Translator Jessica Smith has apparently Jone a singularly fine job of work, retaining the terse spirit of the Russian and giying at the same time an impression of the author’s idiosyncracies, I found the first chapters, dealing with the planning of the flight and the preparation of the aeroplane possibly a little too shorn of technical detail and a little too full of happy faith in Father Stalin to be quite satisfying. Nevertheless, the spirit of adventureand something, indeed, of the queer, indefinable tragedy of the individual in a totalitarian State-is straightly and convincingly expressed. Then, from the moment the giant single-engined monoplane took, the air till it turned back in fog and alighted at Portland, only a major earthquake could have distracted my attention. ; The story gives an indelible impression of hazardous progress-of the foggy steppes of Northern Russia, the menace of storms, the ever-present,

terrible danger of ice; but also an impression of the characters of the three men-Sacha, who could always sleep, anywhere and any time-Chkalov, the skilful coaxer of aircraft-Baidukov | himself, eager and nervous and observant, (UNE follows rapt as the great mechanical bird noses over Arctic ice, twists and wheels to avoid storms, plunges into grey, tenuous banks of vapour, Swoops up and down, away from wet air where ice may form on wings and control surfaces-may bring the adventure to a sudden, tragic end. There are moments of almost une bearable suspense when the oil line be gins leaking, when the de-icer fluid begins to run low before the Pole is crossed. And so skilfully is the crossing of the Pole itself described that the reader feels almost as confused as the aviators when it is suddenly discovered that the course is changed from due north and due south without the plane having deviated as much as an inch! Little or no endeavour is made to describe "scenery’-but a word here and a word there make the awful barrenness of the Pole of Inaccessibility more Vivid in the realder’s mind than a whole dictionary of adjectives. As the publishers of this remarkable little work say, people who are convinced that Russians are not mechani-cally-minded and that creative writing is dead in Russia will have to revise their opinions. In a preface, Vilhjalmur Stefansson explains the scientific importance of that amazing and eventful flight. "Over the North Pole," by George Baidukov (Harrap, London), Our copy from the publisher.