“GREATEST FIGHT”

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 September 1934, Page 10

“GREATEST FIGHT”

HERO OF ARCTIC ICE. Vassili Sergevitch Molokov is in London. Most people in London are unaware of it. Yet tile story of Molokov is one that our grandchildren will remember when the flight of Lindbergh is almost forgotten (writes Patrick Murphy in the London Sunday Express). Early in March of this year there were ninety-four Russian people stranded on an ice-floe to the north of the Behring Strait, in the Arctic Ocean. They were survivors of the Soviet ship Chelyushin, which had been smashed by the ice. Their leader, Professor Schmidt, was able to communicate by wireless with Russia. In classic messages he asked for help. Then one day the despairing eyes | of the ninety-four chanced to look up into the grey, cold sky.

Over the ice there echoed the roar of an airplane. Molokov had come. Fie had flown through blizzards and fogs from Vankarem. a base on the Siberian coast 100 miles away. He circled round over the great prongs of ice which thrust their spear points up above the ice-floe, trying to find a place to land. Tn the biggest area he could find free from obstruction he landed. He stepped out of his machine and walked over to the little group of men. He brought them food. Then he told them he was going to try to rescue them, by flying them six by six to the mainland. For forty minutes he told them just what he proposed to do and what they should do to help him. Molokov was a pilot in the Soviet Marine air force, working hundreds of miles away from this Arctic spot. He had heard oh the wireless of their plight and he had volunteered to bring his machine and try to rescue the marooned men.

His little machine had been dismantled and brought 2000 kilometres to Vankarem. This was his first rescue flight. Tremendously conscious of the razorlike creases in the new grey suit he had bought in London, Molokov told me his epic story with the simplicity of a boy describing the curriculum at his school. “There werd lots of little difficulties,” he said, microssing his long legs so that the creases should not suffer. His pale blue eyes, as clear as crystal, smiled at me. “My machine, you see, was only a little one. It Had really only room for my mechanic aiid : myself. But after I had seen those follows on the ice, (he condition they wore in, the danger of their ice-floe breaking up, I knew we had to hurry. So we made the cockpit, which normally held the mechanic, as big as we could. Then there are two slots in the underpart of the wings in which two parachutes are kept. These we wcie determined to use as cabins’” He smiled.

"I had only one engine, and it was water-cooled. That was regrettable, llieie was plenty of water about us, but the temperature was mostly 35 below zero. The weather was

well, just awful. I squeezed four of the smaller men into the cockpit. Then I got two of them to crawl into these sort of cigar-shaped slots in the wings. When they had got in as far as they could we pushed them the rest of the way and tied them in so

that they, would be safe. Then we tore away a bit of the'canvas over their heads and made a few holes beneath them so that they could breathe and even see where we were going. You see, when a man sees what is happening he isn't so liable tb be afraid.”

He stood up and settled the legs of those new trousers. ’Phen he sat down again. “All this crowd, naturally, put the little machine completely out of balance. My centre of gravity was all over the place. The space in which I had to. get up was about 120 yards instead of about 600; but . . .”

he smiled and passed his strong, tanned hand over his firm chin —“hilt it was oiie of those cases when you have just got to make the little machine do what it is told. "It was a bit of a trial, that first take-off. 1 boiled the water, twice before putting it into the radiator, first to warm the radiator and then to warm the engine. 1 boiled the oil twice, too, to get. the engine as warm as possible. Then I told the passem gers not to be worried, and 1 started off. We skidded all over the little aerodrome, using every inch o£ distance possible, and finally we came ‘unstuck.’ All or that it was just a matter of flying straight. LOST IN THE FOG. “The weather made it a bit hard, and navigation was difficult. But we got to Vankarem. The next day was March 8 I think. I set out again from Vankarem. For fifty kilometres it was cold and clear. Then I ran into a hopeless bank of fog. I could see nothing. Then it became clear again. A bit further on the fog, or sea mist I suppose you would call it, rolled over file again. I looked at my compass. It was quite undecided Where the north might be. It was jazzing about. We were so near the magnetic. Pole. There was no horizon. When I ran into a good patch of weather again the snow and the ice and the clouds seemed all one. It was impossible to tell the clouds from the snow below.”

He looked ‘ down at the flawless trousers, which were just beginning to crease behind the knees a little. Then his clear eyes looked up at me again and his mouth was hard. "I had to go back.” He was silent for a moment. “There are some things you caihibt fight. That weather Was invincible. But those people had to be rescued. The next day I set out early. We had been careful in filling the petrol tanks. The water in the petrol froze easily, so it was not hard to separate it from the spirit when pouring it in. “March 9 was my lucky day. 1 flew those 200 miles there and back ito the ice-floe four times in that day, and f brought six passengers each time. The yiarooned men lay down on the ice in the shape of a T, so that I would sight them better from the air. The poor chaps were becoming easier to settle in the machine, because 1 had more time to talk to them and explain that it was not dangerous. The little machine was behaving perfectly. But the ice-floe was moving all the time.

“Our little aerodrome had got a bit smaller since the first time I had landed on it, and getting down and up was a hit ticklish. Little humps of snow and ice helped hero and there, and the strong winds made it

easier. The next day I was unlucky. I only got one bunch off the icefloe. The weather was diabolical, and the compass was crazy. If you took these plucky people off you had to be as sure as possible that you could land them. There was nowhere over the icebergs between Vankarem and the floe where you could land, and it would not have been quite fair' to take them from the temporary safety of tile floe and crash with them in the icebergs.” Again he smiled and attended to the crease. “Don’t try to niake a hero of me. Levanesky, my colleague was doing much the same as 1 was. It Was all you could do. Oh the. fourth day 1 got the last survivors off. f had carried thirty-nine of them to Vankarem in exactly nine trips.” He laughed. “The last trip was as hard as the first. I’ve never known such weather and such a course to fly over. Only a sea-gull could navigate in that place.” “What did you learn in those nine trips?” 1 asked him. He smiled, and looked at me with a world of humour in his masterful eyes.

“I learnt, a Jot about ice-floes: how plucky inexperienced men caii be in the air; and the little advantages of an air-cooled engine when the thermometer is thirty-odd below zero. I’m not really a technical man.”

His attention turned to the new suit. I left the finest man 1 have ever met. If he had not been a Russian—and if the World had not been naturally just a little prejudiced against Russia —he would be the most famous man in the world today.