Imperial Russia's Pioneers in Arctic Aviation

Аннотация

In the summer of 1914 an extensive search was mounted by the Imperial Russian government for three expeditions, Sedov's, Brusilov's and Rusanov's, all of which had gone missing in the Arctic. As part of the search effort a naval pilot, Yan Iosifovich Nagurskiy, flying a French-built Maurice Farman floatplane, carried out an aerial search of a substantial portion of the west coast of Novaya Zemlya. In five major flights, totalling 10 hours 40 minutes in the air, Nagurskiy flew some 1060 km. This was the first successful attempt at operating an aircraft anywhere in the Arctic. During that same summer another naval pilot, D.N. Aleksandrov, attached to the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition aboard Taymyr and Vaygach, assembled his machine, an Henri Farman, at Bukhta Emma in Chukotka, but it suffered some irreparable damage during a test flight. During the expedition's subsequent wintering off the west coast of Poluostrov Taymyr Aleksandrov used the aircraft engine to power an aerosled, which was successfully used on a survey trip in June 1915. This was probably the world's first functional aerosled.

Key words: Arctic aviation, Nagurskiy, Novaya Zemlya